Identity III: Main Phase
by MyAibou
Summary: Post canon. Yugi's personal battle comes to a head as the pieces begin to fall into place as to the true identity of Ramesses.
1. Kisara

**IDENTITY**

**Disclaimer:** If I owned _Yu-gi-oh!_ and its characters instead of Kazuki Takahashi, would I be posting this for free online? No. I'd be out on a trip around the world spending my royalty checks.

**Rating:** T for language, suggestive content, mild violence (of the battling-cartoon-monsters variety).

**Pairings and Warnings:** Yugi x Téa (x Atem). Kaiba x Kisara. Joey x Mai. Tristan x Serenity. Some Bakura x Marik (_shonen ai_ mostly; nothing very graphic.) Puzzleshippy stuff if you squint really hard. And yeah, I use the dub names. It's how I got to know and love these characters. But the continuity pulls from the dub, the sub, and the manga and exists in the same universe as all my other YGO stories. Sequel to the _Revival_ series.

**Acknowledgements: **I need to thank **Lucidscreamer** again. Not only does the fear of getting a Lucidscreamer Sporking (TM) keep me from being lazy about research, whenever I can't find the answer to a question about Ancient Egypt on my own, she has gone above and beyond to research it for me. Most of all, I cannot thank her enough for providing the phrase that Yugi cries out in his dark night of the soul.

* * *

**Part III**  
**Main Phase**

_This is when you play most of your cards: you can Normal Summon, Set, or change the battle position of a monster, activate a card's effect, and Set Spell and Trap Cards. These actions can be done in any order you want, but some actions have restrictions._  
—Yu-gi-oh! Trading Card Game Official Rulebook

* * *

**1. Kisara**

"I've got it! Tahiti!"

Joey looked up from the library computer where he was attempting yet another unsuccessful Google search as Mai slapped a piece of paper down over the keyboard, a victorious smile on her lips. He offered her a lazy grin in return. "Sounds good to me, but I think we've got a little too much on our plate for a vacation right now."

"No, you bonehead, there's a regional tournament in Tahiti starting tomorrow. And guess who's gonna be in it?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Lemme guess. Biker, bad haircut, worse accent…"

She snorted. "Like you're one to talk about bad haircuts and accents. But yes, I've got it right here, and it only took about five minutes of flirting with the tournament registration guy. Thank God for Blackberrys. It's so much easier when you can e-mail pictures—"

He leaned back and crossed his arms. "Yeah, unless for some reason you're _looking_ to have me to kill this anonymous registration guy, you'd better stop right there."

"The point is, Valon will be in Tahiti no later than tomorrow. Might even be there right now."

"Well, thank God." Joey pushed back from the computer in disgust. "'Cause after two days of finding a big fat nothing, I'm so done with the whole internet search thing. I was getting ready to throw myself at Rebecca's feet when she gets home this afternoon and bow before her computer wizardry."

"Oh, but my methods are so much more fun." Mai leaned over him, giving him an eyeful of exactly why her "methods" were so successful.

"Only when you're trying to get information from _me_." He pulled her down into his lap. "And can I just say how good it is to have you back to your obnoxious, overly-flirtatious self?" Before she could respond, he drew her into a long, lingering kiss, grateful for every aggravating, exasperating, maddening trait she possessed.

"Mmmm." She nuzzled his neck when they broke for air. "It's good to _be_ my obnoxious, overly-flirtatious self. Two nights dream-free." Then she pulled back, giving him a more serious look. "Although, you're still not sleeping great, I noticed. What's that about?"

He looked up at her and shrugged. "I dunno. The thing with the Pharaoh, probably." He sighed. "Things were finally looking up around here after you and Yuge beat the Shadow Game, but it's been, like, ten days since that bastard sent the other Yugi to the Shadow Realm, and we still got nothing to get him back. I'm worried about Yugi."

Mai looked thoughtful. "He's been better the last couple of days, though."

"Better than the few days before that, maybe, but he's still not himself, have you noticed?" Joey shifted her on his lap slightly to get more comfortable. "Kinda standoffish and gloomy? That just ain't Yugi, and I don't know whether to hug him to try to make it better, or smack him."

"You can hardly blame him, given what happened."

"It's not that I blame him. It's just… it ain't Yugi."

She nodded. "Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about that. Neither one of us is likely to find the way to bring back the Pharaoh since we don't read ancient Egyptian. But…." She picked up the sheet of paper that was still lying across the keyboard. "If we can get some answers from Valon, maybe that will help get everything back on track."

He looked over the paper, a list of contestants for a regional Duel Monsters tournament in Papeete, Tahiti. Sure enough, Valon's name was listed. "So do we have his phone number?"

"Not his, no. We do have the number for the hotel, but I'm not sure how far we'll get trying to reach him that way. We're not likely to catch him in his room, and after what happened in London, he might not be willing to return my call."

Joey's eyes narrowed. "Wait. What happened in London?"

"Nothing." She waved it away and gave him a wicked grin. "It would be an awful shame if the two of us had to go out there to speak to him in person."

Joey raised his eyebrows. "To Tahiti."

"It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the team."

"You're just so giving that way," he said dryly. "And you didn't answer my question about London."

She lowered her voice and leaned in close to him, tracing her finger in a line down his jaw. "I bought a couple of bikinis last August when all the summer stuff was on clearance at Hush."

He swallowed, London forgotten. "Yeah, Tahiti sounds good."

Hooking her finger under his chin, she pulled him into another kiss.

"Oh man, would you two get a room?"

They broke away. Tristan was standing in the doorway, his arms folded in disgust.

Joey smirked. "Hey, don't blame me just 'cause your new girlfriend is all the way in England. What?" he asked as Mai suddenly gave him an irate look and moved off his lap into the next chair.

Tristan leaned against the doorjamb. "She's not my girlfriend… yet."

Mai gave Tristan one of her fishing-for-information smiles. "So what is the story, Tristan? I heard she called you from England the other day. You two really hitting it off, huh?"

Tristan shrugged, not quite meeting Mai's eyes. "Hard to say. We had a great conversation, and we wanna get to know each other better, but with everything going on here, I haven't even had a chance to so much as e-mail her since then."

"I so couldn't do the long-distance thing." Mai sighed dramatically, curling her hair around her finger.

"What are you talking about? We almost had to, remember?" Joey glared at her. Why was she trying to ruin this for Tristan?

She flashed him another annoyed look in return. "And if _you'll_ remember, I said I couldn't handle it."

Joey crossed his arms. "So what's a little distance when you work for a guy with a fleet of private jets? You should totally go for it, bro."

Mai looked ready to kill him—just what was her problem anyway?—but she turned to Tristan instead. "Do you think it'd be worth the hassle?"

He shrugged again. "Too soon to tell. So, any luck finding Valon?"

Mai took the hint and let the subject drop. "Actually, I just found out he'll be at a tournament that starts tomorrow. In Tahiti."

Tristan whistled. "Tahiti? Why do I get the feeling you'll find an excuse to go see him in person?"

"It's a dirty job." Joey grinned. "So how about you guys? Find out anything about the whole 'locked out' business?"

"Nothing so far." Tristan finally came all the way into the room. Grabbing a chair from the table, he pulled it near the computer where Joey was sitting and straddled it backwards, resting his arms across the back. "It's not like there's a Shadow Game tech support we can call. The stuff that has been written up is a lot of mystical gobbly-gook that's hard to follow, and every text we find contradicts every other text we find. But it does seem like whoever calls a Dark Game can put all sorts of weird conditions on it."

"Sounds like Pegasus's area of expertise," Mai said.

Tristan nodded. "Actually, Duke and Serenity are up in Marin right now talking to Pegasus about how his duel with Yugi worked."

Joey glowered at him. "You let my sister go off _alone_ with Duke Devlin?"

Tristan groaned, burying his face in his arms, and Mai cuffed Joey upside the head with the heel of her hand. "Stop being such an idiot!"

"Hey!" Joey rubbed his head.

"Like you'd be any happier if I went too." Tristan sat up again. "Seriously, dude, you've got to let it go. She has enough issues without you being the psycho-brother from hell."

Mai flashed Joey a sort of triumphant look, but he ignored her, his cheek twitching as he glared at Tristan. "And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means Serenity's a big girl, so let it go," Mai answered for him. "But Tristan, why didn't you go see Pegasus, too?"

"'Cause Joey and I are meeting Yugi and Téa at one o'clock at that diner Yugi likes out by the airport. We're having a little powwow with Marik. They already left to go pick him up—his flight gets in about quarter to eleven."

"I still don't see why I shouldn't go, too." Mai sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, pouting. "It's one thing if Yugi doesn't want him staying here, but leaving me out of a conversation about my own nightmares? Seriously, I don't think it's a big deal. He didn't bother me after Battle City."

Tristan leaned forward and rested his chin on his arms. "Yugi has been a little skittish about Marik coming here, don't you think? I noticed it in Luxor, too, like he was kind of avoiding him. It's a little weird, isn't it? He was totally cool with Marik when we were there three years ago. What's changed?"

Joey frowned. "You don't think it's 'cause of him and Bakura?"

"What, like he's bothered that they're gay?" Tristan straightened, shaking his head. "Nah, I can't picture Yugi caring about that. And he's still cool with Bakura."

"Yeah, you're probably right. I guess it's just one more weird side effect from whatever is going on with him because of the thing with the Pharaoh. Man, I hope we find a way to bring him back soon."

"Maybe Sara and Kaiba will find something?" Mai said hopefully.

Joey shuddered. "Don't even talk about the two of them. I'm still trying to scrub my brain from the very thought of Kaiba—OW!" He shrieked as Mai suddenly kicked him in the shins. "What'dja do—AAAHH!" Joey jumped about two feet off his seat as Sara appeared from the book stacks. "Sara! What are you doing here?"

Mai threatened him with her boot again, but fortunately for him, Sara was engrossed in a very ancient-looking scroll and was muttering to herself, oblivious to their presence. His scream seemed to only barely penetrate her consciousness and she looked up. "What? Oh, hello, I didn't see you there. Did you say something?"

"What are you doing here? I thought you were staying at Kaiba's." He grimaced, and Mai gave him another warning look.

But Sara was already looking back down at the scroll in her hands. "Oh, yes. I came back to get some more texts."

"You find something interesting, Sara?" Mai asked. "Are you onto a ritual that might help the Pharaoh?"

"Oh, no, I'm afraid not. But I did find something quite astonishing. It's a record of prisoners taken during what seems to be a rather broad sweep made during Atem's reign."

Joey tried not to yawn. "So?"

She looked up, staring at him, an incredulous expression on her face. "'So?' Do you have any idea what a find this is? Surviving legal documents from any era are rare, but there is virtually nothing that survives from Atem's time on the throne. Not only was it such a fleeting reign, what few records there would have been were all purged, probably by whoever removed his name from his tomb and the stone tablet in Giza. But this refers to some sort of unspeakable desecration and a battle at the palace during a pharaoh's coronation. As a result of this, the pharaoh issued a decree that more or less put Egypt under martial law, and two of the court's sacred guardians were put in charge of a sweep made of the city. One of them is Seto! That means it must be from Atem's reign." She shook her head, agitated. "This is unbelievable! The more I find out about Ishizu Ishtar, the angrier I get. She ought to be arrested for hoarding something like this! How could she have a document like this and not turn it over to the public archives?"

"A lot of stuff she has was handed down from her family," Joey said. "I doubt she even knows what all is there."

"I don't care! This is invaluable. The detail is remarkable. It tells how Seto and another sacred guardian called Shada arrested anyone they found to be suspicious. There's quite a list of suspects." She looked at the document again, clearly excited. "And this, here, it's so _unusual_. A description of a woman who was taken into custody after a mob tried to stone her to death, claiming she had a demon."

Joey's eyes widened as a flash of a memory came to him. "Whoa, no way! Lemme see that!" He jumped up from his seat and grabbed the document away from Sara.

"Careful! That's quite valuable and fragile!"

"And you don't read hieroglyphics," Mai reminded him dryly.

Joey looked at the jumble of symbols on the parchment before Sara snatched it back from him with an indignant huff. He grinned, sheepish. "Oh yeah."

"What's got you so interested in ancient history all of a sudden?" Mai asked him.

"'Cause I _remember_ that girl!" He looked at Tristan for confirmation. "Remember when we first got there? The crowd stoning a girl?"

Tristan's jaw dropped. "You're right! The Kaiba look-alike dude stopped them."

Mai and Sara both looked between the two of them, Sara with confusion and Mai with curiosity. "You're joking."

Joey shook his head. "No, really. It was when we first got into the Memory World. We were trying to find the Pharaoh and ended up in the middle of this mob of people throwing stones at this poor woman lying unconscious on the ground. She didn't look Egyptian. More like a cousin of Bakura's or something. White hair, pale skin—"

"Wait, how did you know that?" Sara was frowning at him.

"What?"

"This says the mob thought Kisara had a demon because she had light skin and white hair."

"Kisara?"

"Yes. That's the name listed here, which is odd. She's the only prisoner listed by name. All of the others are referred to by the names of demons that the guardians believed possessed them, while Kisara's 'demon' isn't listed. But if you can't read hieroglyphics, how did you know? _I've_ never heard this story before, and I've studied every piece of information there is on this era. How could you have possibly known about her light skin and white hair?"

Joey sighed and rolled his eyes. "You wouldn't believe me if—" He stopped short. _White hair_... His eyes went round as he sucked in his breath. "No _way_."

"What?" Mai asked.

Tristan's brow furrowed. "Yeah, man, what's the deal?"

Joey stared at Sara, whose confusion turned to a more disturbed look at his sudden scrutiny. He'd only seen the woman for a moment, and she'd been unconscious and dressed in sackcloth, her hair loose and covering most of her face, but even with Sara alert, in modern clothes with her hair pulled back, he was certain. How could they have missed it? "_That's_ why you look so familiar." He turned to Tristan. "She's _her_!"

"She's who?"

"Look at her! White hair? Pale skin? She's _the same girl_, the one who was getting stoned!"

Tristan leaned forward to study her as well. "Whoa, dude! I think you're right!"

Sara looked indignant. "What in the bloody hell are you on about?"

"Yeah, I'd like to hear this too," Mai said, her arms crossed impatiently, but with more curiosity and less irritation than Sara.

"She's _her_. Just like Yugi and Kaiba and Ishizu with the whole past life thing. She was there, the girl who was almost stoned." Joey stopped as another piece fell into place. "Wait." He turned from Mai back to Sara. "You said her name was _Kisara_? Holy shit, that explains everything! Why you ended up in Seto's tomb, why you love dragons. Why you and Kaiba—" He shook his head, not wanting to go there.

"_Excuse_ me?" Sara flushed an angry red. "Have you taken _complete_ leave of your senses?"

"You lost me there, too, bro," Tristan said.

"You know how the monsters came from people? Remember Mana and Dark Magician Girl? Kisara was Blue-Eyes White Dragon." He turned to Sara. "_You're_ Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"

Tristan stared at him. "What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

Sara, however, turned even paler than usual, all the irritation draining completely from her face. "What?" This time her voice was almost too quiet to hear.

Joey looked at Tristan. "Remember on the island down in those caves, when Kaiba and Mai and I checked out a different tunnel? Kaiba found this one group of hieroglyphics that was really bugging him, and he said Blue-Eyes came from someone named Kisara."

Tristan scratched the back of his head. "What would he know about her? He wasn't even there until later."

"Who knows what he saw before he joined us in that last battle." Joey shook his head, berating himself for not seeing it sooner. "It all makes sense. Her thing for dragons, the sleepwalking to Seto's tomb, her coming all the way out here to help us find a ritual she don't even believe in. She's connected to this, just as much as Yugi or Kaiba or Ishizu or Gramps—"

"WOULD YOU KINDLY STOP TALKING ABOUT ME LIKE I'M NOT EVEN IN THE ROOM!"

Joey frowned as he turned back to Sara. She looked almost hysterical, her hands clenched at her side, crumpling the middle of the document in her fist despite the fact that she'd admonished him earlier about how valuable and fragile it was.

Tristan rose from his seat, holding his hands out to placate her. "Whoa. It's okay. We're just trying to figure it out."

"Figure _what_ out? How I'm supposed to be the girl in this text? You're mad." She took a step back, looking from Tristan to Mai to Joey. "All of you, you're all completely deranged."

Joey shook his head. "No, we're not. We were there, Sara. Me, Tristan, Yugi, and Téa. We went back into the past, only it wasn't really the past—it was a world built on the Pharaoh's memories. But still, we were _there_. I know the story of the girl in that text because I _saw it happen_. Kaiba—I mean Seto, the priest guy with Kaiba's face—he rescued her from the mob and took her back to the palace. That's what it says in that scroll of yours, right? He ordered the guards to give her whatever food and water she wanted, and then he threatened the crowd if they didn't leave. Am I right?"

"I—" Sara looked down at the text again, smoothing it out between her two hands, which Joey could see were shaking. "My God, you are. It says she was taken to the palace, but not as a prisoner, and the crowd was disbursed." She met his gaze once more, her eyes wide and disturbed. "But what did you mean, she's the White Dragon? That _I_—"

"Ask Kaiba."

"What?"

"Kaiba's the one who told me about her."

Sara swallowed. "I don't understand."

"I think you do," Joey said levelly. "It's why you're here, isn't it?"

"I—" But she couldn't finish. Shaking her head, she backed away again, as if suddenly afraid he would launch an attack.

"Ask Kaiba," he told her. "If anyone knows about Blue-Eyes and Kisara, it's Kaiba."


	2. Shared Dreams

**2. Shared Dreams**

Sara was still shaking when she arrived back at Kaiba Corp. It was stupid, she tried to tell herself. These people had been spouting fantastic nonsense since they day she met them. They were complete nutters, every last one of them, and she hadn't let it bother her before. Let them have their flights of fancy, and she would do the work she came to do because it was respectful to the pharaohs she'd spent the last two years of her life studying. The rest… it was ridiculous, absurd, ludicrous.

_Then how did he know about the dragon?_

He didn't. It's not like it took a genius to work out there was something going on between her and Seto, so he was making wild connections because of Seto's dragon…

_No he isn't; he_ knows.

_Preposterous_, she told herself. And yet, she was shaking as his words rang through her head. _You're Blue-Eyes White Dragon. It explains everything. Why you ended up in Seto's tomb, why you love dragons. Why you and Kaiba—_

_Bollocks_, she told herself firmly. _He's a nutter. I am not a bloody dragon!_

Except in her dreams, where she most definitely was a dragon. A _white_ dragon. And she'd based her entire career on a carving of a dragon because of those dreams, so who exactly was the one who was the nutter here?

Arriving at Seto's office, she breezed past his secretary, Marla, who had instructions from Seto to let her come and go as she pleased. She went into his inner office without knocking, and Seto didn't even look up when she entered. He was engrossed in something on the computer monitor, his fingers clicking on the keyboard without intermission. She paused in the door a moment, then strode over to his desk and stood before him.

"Who is Kisara?"

She'd expected a blank response. A scoff or a sniff of disdain. Or a shrug of indifference. Instead, he went absolutely still, his fingers stopping on the keyboard and his jaw tightening. Without looking away from the monitor, he asked, "Where did you hear that name?"

By way of reply, she put the scroll down in front of him and pointed to the relevant passage. He read it, his expression unchanging, then finally he looked up at her. "Why are you asking me about her?"

"Because Joey Wheeler told me to. He seems to think he was actually _there_ when this girl was almost stoned to death, and that _you_ know something about her."

"Joey Wheeler is an imbecile who doesn't have the brain of a newborn howler monkey. Why on earth would you listen to anything he has to say?"

"Because he described her! He knew they were stoning her for her pale coloring. He knew that Seto had her placed in protective custody and had disbursed the crowds. This is a previously unknown text, and Joey doesn't read hieroglyphics!"

"Wheeler wouldn't know his own ass if you shoved his face between his legs."

"Seto, he _knew_. And he said _I'm_ somehow connected to her. And that she's connected to your White Dragon. And don't think I've forgotten how you reacted to me the day we met—you thought someone was playing a joke on you. You mentioned my white hair, my blue eyes. Is that what that was? That I resemble this Kisara person?"

"You do realize you're talking about someone that lived and died thousands of years ago."

"But you've heard of her! You reacted to the name!"

"This has nothing to do with you."

"Like hell it doesn't! I want to know what connection this woman has with your White Dragon."

He stood up and pounded his desk. "My dragons are _my_ business, Sara!"

"I've been dreaming I _am_ your White Dragon since I was seven, Seto!"

This seemed to rattle him. "What?"

She sunk into the seat behind her facing his desk. "I've dreamt about your dragon. That's why I'm so enthralled with them. With her in particular. And once I dreamt I was in ancient Egypt. I was a person, then, a woman who gave up my life to become a dragon, all to protect a man. A priest. After I had that dream, that's when I started studying Egyptology. And when I saw the stone tablet in Giza, with the priest and the dragon, I _knew_ we were connected. I didn't believe it, but I _knew_. And today I found this." She indicated the scroll in front of Seto. "Joey described the scene even though there was no way he could have known, and I realized I _dreamt_ that, I dreamt it _exactly_ the way he described it. That I was being attacked, and a priest saved me, so I became a dragon to save him. How could Joey have known any of that? Am I insane? Have I completely lost my mind? I need to know, Seto. Do you understand _any_ of this? I need to know."

He sat down slowly and regarded her for a long moment as if weighing his words carefully. "I already told you, I don't believe everything they believe. I don't believe everything is magic and monsters. But I have seen things I can't explain, and Kisara is one of them. I've had several… visions. Of a woman with long white hair. She's unconscious, or dead, and is cradled in the arms of an Egyptian priest who looks like me. Ishizu Ishtar had something to do with it—it all started when she showed me that damn tablet and insisted it was me and Yugi, that we were rivals in ancient Egypt. I didn't believe any of it—simple tricks and nonsense." He sniffed in disdain, folding his arms.

"If you don't believe—"

"I said I _didn't_ believe. But somehow I kept getting drawn into Yugi's dramas, and I ended up in Egypt three years ago and had… I don't know what it was. Another vision maybe. A dream. A nightmare. An acid trip because Ishizu drugged me. I don't know. But it was as if I was a ghost in the past. No one could see me, except the geek squad and _her_. Kisara. The woman from my other visions. She knew my name, only it wasn't my name, it was _his_ name. She thought I was him at first, but realized I was someone else. She told me something about an evil force threatening the land, and that she had to find 'Seto,' then ran off, so I followed her. She found him—the priest that looks like me—in some sort of temple. I'm not sure what exactly was going on. They were attacked by some guy in a lame costume and mask."

She gasped. "A white mask, like an eggshell. It covered most of his face."

He looked startled again, but then nodded and went on. "He attacked them with a flame monster of some sort and she… she summoned Blue-Eyes, but not like in a duel. It came from _inside_ her."

She nodded. "Yes, I dreamt that. I was the girl and the dragon. And the priest… I could never see him, to see what he looked like. But I did fight with a flame monster, and the man in the mask trapped me in some sort of circle."

"Spellbinding Circle. And he tried to seal Blue-Eyes into some kind of stone, but it wasn't working so he attacked the priest, but Kisara jumped in front of him to shield him."

Sara felt her eyes burn as tears slowly spilled out. "I couldn't let him get hurt. He'd saved my life. And that's how I became a dragon."

He took another long pause before continuing. "The priest killed the masked man, but then I think… I don't know what happened. He was being controlled or something. Yugi showed up then, and they started to duel, Blue-Eyes against Dark Magician. Idiotic—Blue-Eyes can wipe the floor with Dark Magician. She dusted him, but then she wouldn't attack Yugi directly. I'm not really sure what happened, but she disappeared and then, I think she set the priest free somehow. And that's all I know."

"Oh, God." Sara was finding it hard to breathe, as if a weight was squeezing her chest. "It's exactly like my dream. And then I fought some sort of giant monster with two heads, and I had _three_ heads, and a knight in black armor joined with me, which was a bit anachronistic, come to think of it—"

"Master of Dragon Knight." Seto looked stunned. "Three Blue-Eyes combine to make Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, and that combines with Yugi's Black Luster Soldier to form Master of Dragon Knight."

She didn't understand what he was saying, but she nodded dimly, feeling surreal. How could her dream match his… what was it again? A dream of his own? A vision? How could they share the same dream? "I had been having a lot of dragon dreams at the time, but that was the only one in Egypt, and the only one where I was a person, too. And it was the last one for a long time, until last May. I dreamt I was fighting some sort of bronze-armored thing with these glowing balls of light—"

He actually gasped at that. "Reshef!"

"What?"

"Reshef the Dark Being! You dreamt about Reshef last May?"

She nodded again. "I was fighting him with the wizard—Yugi's Dark Magician, right? And a black dragon—" Her eyes widened as she realized where she'd seen that dragon. "Joey's Red-Eyes Black Dragon!"

Seto's jaw shifted, but he said nothing.

"There were others." She put her hand over her mouth, feeling sick. "Oh, dear Lord, most of them were the same monsters as on the walls in Yugi's flat. The magician girl, the girl with the blue face and blonde hair, the girl with the wings and talons—"

"It was a Shadow Game," he said, not elaborating further.

"Like what Yugi was talking about the other day?"

"Yes."

"Then you had this same dream, too?"

"It wasn't a dream. It was an actual battle on the island where we were shipwrecked."

"An actual—" She shook her head, trying to focus. "But you know what I'm talking about?"

"Yes. Ten of us fought against Reshef."

She swallowed, trying not to be sick all over Seto's desk. "This is insane! How can I be dreaming the same thing as you?" She chose to ignore the fact that he'd just claimed it hadn't been a dream.

At that moment, the door burst open and Mokuba flew into the room. "Hey _Nii-sama_, I—" He stopped short, taking in the scene at the desk. "Sara? What's wrong?"

"Not now, Mokuba," Seto said softly.

She could tell the quietness in his brother's voice disturbed Mokuba more than a sharp reprimand would have. He looked between the two of them, then nodded and backed toward the door.

"Lock the door behind you, and tell Marla we are not to be disturbed under any circumstances."

Mokuba gave another jerky nod, then quickly left, locking the door behind him. Sara turned back to Seto, her eye catching a picture on his desk of him and Mokuba together. Seto wasn't smiling—typical, that—but there was a warmth in his eyes as he draped his arm protectively over his younger brother's shoulders. Mokuba, the one person that mattered most in the world to him—

She covered her mouth with a shaky hand. "The boy and the egg!"


	3. The Dragon, the Egg, and the Boy

**3. The Dragon, the Egg, and the Boy**

"The what?" Seto frowned, confused, and Sara felt nauseous all over again.

"Oh, my God, Seto, it isn't just your dragon. My whole life I've been dreaming about _you_!" She shook her head, trying to clear it. "Mokuba was born when you were seven, and that was when your mother died, right?"

"Yes, but—"

"That was when I had my first dream. I was a dragon and the boy—you—had suffered a horrible loss. And I was ten when I had the next one. The ice and the ship—" She sucked in a ragged breath. _"Checkmate."_

"What?" He looked completely lost.

"You won your adoption from that awful man in a chess match, that's what Mokuba said."

"Yes, but—"

"And you turned to ice to protect Mokuba. Oh, God, Seto, I _dreamt_ it. And then when I was sixteen, I… you—" Her eyes widened. "That was when you took over your father's company!"

"Stepfather," he said automatically, although she clearly had him rattled.

Her forehead creased as she tried to think. That was when the boy had taken over the ship, but he'd dropped the egg. "Seto, what did you do when you took over the company?"

"What? I don't know what—"

_"What did you do?"_ She was starting to feel hysterical. "You did something to Mokuba when you took over Kaiba Corp, didn't you? You hurt him in some way, I know you did—it was in my dream. What did you do?"

He stopped cold, looking almost as sick as she felt. When he spoke, his voice was a low monotone, void of any emotion, not even his usual haughtiness. "Gozaburo would've never let me buy up fifty-one percent of the shares, so I had to trick him. Mokuba owned two shares. I leaked the buyout to Gozaburo's people and then blamed Mokuba and told him I never wanted to see him again. He had no one to turn to but Gozaburo. The old man was sure Mokuba would throw in with him, so he let me buy forty-nine percent. Only I knew that no matter what I did, Mokuba would remain loyal to me. He threw in with me instead and Gozaburo—" Seto stopped, his jaw so tight she thought his face might crack. "In the end Mokuba understood why I did it. It was the only way."

"Oh, God, it's true. I've been dreaming about your life for _fifteen years_."

He said nothing, and then she did get hysterical, laughing in a tight, high-pitched voice completely void of humor. "I've gone completely mental. This isn't _possible_." She looked at him. "That's why we've been… why we've…" Another hysterical giggle bubbled up. "Because of your vision and my dreams. It isn't real, none of it is _real_. We're obsessed with _shadows_. Nothing but shadows and ghosts of people who aren't even us!"

"I know."

She stared at him. "You know? That's all you can say? My God, Seto, do you have any idea how sick and _wrong_ this all is?"

He didn't say anything, but seemed to regain his composure, that stoic impassiveness slipping into place as easily as the eggshell mask from their shared dream.

Abruptly, she rose from her seat. "I can't do this. I can't be a part of this… this insanity. I should never have come here. What was I _thinking_? We have to end this… this whatever it is, and I need to go back to Cairo."

He paused for just a moment, and she might have seen a flicker of emotion, but then there was only the mask and she thought she must have imagined it. In that maddening, blank voice, he said, "I think that would probably be for the best."

As insane as this whole thing was, as sick as her whole sordid relationship with him made her feel, as much as she'd known all along it was only a fling and nothing more, his indifference felt like a brick to her stomach. "Well, then. I… I can be packed in thirty minutes. I'm sure I can catch a flight back this evening if I hurry and ring the airline—"

"Sara," Seto said quietly, and she stopped, waiting. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"Yes?"

There was a long pause before he spoke again. "I can have a car take you to the airport if you'd like."

It was all she could do to keep her breakfast down. "That won't be necessary. I can ring for a cab." And before he could say anything more, she turned and walked quickly from the office. As soon as she was in the hallway, she began to run, making it to the ladies' room just in time.

* * *

The Kaiba penthouse was mercifully empty when Sara went to pack and make arrangements for her flight to Cairo. The first thing she did was call the airline. It was Coptic Christmas Day, so finding an available flight was a challenge, but she managed to book herself on one that left San Francisco at 3:00 that afternoon, which gave her just enough time to pack and get to the airport early enough to clear security. It cost her a penalty of five hundred Egyptian pounds to change her flight, and she now had to connect in Montreal at 2:00 AM instead of Frankfurt at a more reasonable hour, but it was worth it to get out of San Francisco and away from all the madness _today_. She then called Professor Julius to let him know she'd be returning early.

"Is everything all right, Sara? You sound distressed."

"No, it's fine, Professor. I just… I don't believe I'm accomplishing anything here."

"Well, I wasn't exactly sure what you'd hoped to accomplish in the first place, but I'm sorry your trip didn't go as planned. Would you like for me to arrange for someone to pick you up at the airport?"

"I don't want you to go to any trouble."

"Nonsense, it's no trouble at all. I'll see you when you return."

Her flight and ground transportation in Cairo arranged, Sara went to the guest suite to pack her things. Since she'd come to stay here two days ago, she and Seto had pretty much given up pretending they were going to resist sleeping together, but she still had kept all her things in the guest suite, if for no other reason than she could lie to herself that she was keeping up appearances for Mokuba. Now she was grateful she'd made that decision—if she'd had to go into Seto's room to pack, she feared she might get sick again. It had been bad enough feeling like a slag for being so obsessively attracted to someone for no reason. Knowing what the reason was, and knowing how absolutely _insane_ the reason was, somehow made it worse. She was _not_ the reincarnation of a woman who lived thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt and who'd fallen in love with one of the pharaoh's high court, dammit! And she certainly hadn't turned herself into a dragon to save his life. All she wanted was to be back in Cairo, to immerse herself in her studies from her safe scholarly objectivity. Professor Julius had been right all along. Romantic rubbish about dragons and magic had no place in academia.

She packed in record time, then called for a cab, debating whether to wait in the penthouse or downstairs in the lobby. She wanted to go, but at the same time, a small part of her was hoping Seto might come after her. She hated herself for that. It had only been a _fling_—and one based on something as insubstantial as dreams. It wasn't sodding _Sabrina_, and Seto wasn't Humphrey Bogart to her Audrey Hepburn. She'd finally decided that waiting in the lobby would be best and was gathering her things when she heard the door handle turn. Her heart caught in her throat—and then plummeted again when Mokuba entered the penthouse. He took in her luggage and his eyes widened.

"You're not leaving, are you? I thought you were staying for a couple more days!"

"I'm sorry, Mokuba, I have to go. My cab will be here—"

"I _knew_ he'd find a way to screw this up!" Mokuba looked ready to put his fist through a wall, but then approached her, eyes pleading. "Listen, Sara, everyone knows Seto's a jerk, okay? But a lot of it's just this… I dunno, this shell he has. I know you know there's more to him than that, so whatever he said or did, please don't let it ruin everything."

"Mokuba, stop. There was nothing to ruin, all right? And it isn't Seto, he didn't say anything."

"Then why are you leaving?"

She bit her lip. "You live in a world where pharaohs who have been dead for thousands of years come back to possess teenage boys, and playing the wrong kind of game can send you to hell. I don't want to live in that world."

He cocked his head at her in concern. "What happened? Was there another Shadow Game? Did someone—"

"No! Mokuba, just… I don't want to discuss it. I don't want to be a part of any of this. It's madness!"

He regarded her a moment, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "It's not so bad, you know. Sure as hell beats the alternative anyway."

"Alternative? What alternative?"

He shook his head. "Things were a lot worse before we met Yugi and got sucked into all of this… stuff. I didn't realize at the time, 'cause I was just a kid and idolized everything my big brother did, but he was pretty screwed up before. Hell, I wasn't much better, but Seto… it was like he was rotting from the inside out, and maybe I was, too. But then he played Yugi and he _lost_. He'd never lost before, not at anything, and for a while it messed him up pretty bad and I _hated_ Yugi for that. I thought he took my big brother from me, but do you know what really happened? He gave him _back_. He did something in that first duel. He… I dunno, he somehow cleaned the darkness out of him or something. I mean, he seems the same on the outside, this jerk that no one can touch and all obsessed with winning and being the best, but no matter how hard he tries not to show it, he _cares_ again. Before that, he hadn't cared about anything, not since he took over Kaiba Corp. So all this—what did you call it? Madness? All this 'madness' gave me my brother back."

She blinked at him, remembering the dream she'd had where the boy had dropped the Egg to take over the ship, and how the ice he'd been made of seemed to be holding back something rancid. And the later dreams where the ice-boy was clean again, and she'd somehow known it was because of the wizard. _Yugi's_ wizard. She shook her head as if trying to fling the images from it. "This is exactly what I'm talking about, Mokuba. I don't want to live in this world of yours where magic cleans the darkness out of people's hearts. I want to go _home_." Pulling her luggage behind her, she brushed past him towards the door.

"Sara—"

"My cab will be here soon. I enjoyed getting to know you, Mokuba. I'm glad you're happy with how your life is now, but please don't ask me to be a part of something I cannot. I'm going to go back to Cairo, and I'm going to study ancient Egypt as a _scholar_. That's where I belong."

* * *

Mai came down the stairs into the common room wearing workout clothes and carrying a gym bag over her shoulder. Joey and Tristan had left not long ago to meet Yugi, Téa, and Marik for lunch, and she was still fuming about being excluded. She'd considered going anyway, but conceded that Yugi tended to have a second sense about these things, so if he felt it was best for her to stay away from Marik, at least until they figured out what exactly had been done to her and how, then she probably should. Still, it grated on her. She decided a workout in the building's gym would help her work off her aggravation.

As she reached the landing, the phone rang—the main line for the penthouse—and she made a detour into the seating area nearest the elevator to answer it.

"Hello, Mai, is it? This is Sara Drake. I was wondering if Yugi was there."

Mai frowned; Sara's voice sounded hollow, and what was that background noise? "No, he's still out. I'm the only one here right now."

"Oh. Well, I was hoping to speak with him before I left. I'm at the airport. My flight leaves at three."

"You're leaving? I thought you weren't going back until the tenth." Mai hissed out a breath of air between her teeth, irritated. "Is this because of what Joey said? Because it is universally acknowledged that Joey Wheeler is an idiot. Don't let him freak you out, Sara."

"It's not his fault, Mai. I just don't want to be a part of all this. It was one thing to help find a ritual that would respect the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. It's another to think you've been there—to think _I've_ been there—in some sort of past life."

"I know it's all weird and hard to believe, but running away from the weirdness doesn't help. Take it from someone who's been there done that; running away only makes it worse. If Joey's right and you are connected to all this—and I think maybe you suspect he is or you'd just be laughing at him for being mental instead of freaking out—then your best bet is to stay here with people who can help you sort through what it means."

"I don't want to know what any of it means." Her voice took on a harder edge. "Just tell Yugi I left and that I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful."

"Sara—"

"Good-bye, Mai."

Mai looked at the phone after Sara had disconnected and hung it up with a sigh. _Good luck, _she thought._ I have a feeling you'll be needing it._


	4. The Pharaoh's Legacy

**4. The Pharaoh's Legacy**

Grayson's was a fifties-style diner off U.S. 101 just north of the San Francisco International Airport. It had black-and-white checkered floors, red vinyl booths, and some of the greasiest burgers Téa had ever tasted. The place reminded her a little too much of Burger World back in Domino, where she'd slaved for three years while struggling to save enough money to study dance in New York. Yugi had always loved the place, however, which is probably why he often suggested they eat at Grayson's when headed to or from the airport.

Today, however, he didn't seem all that interested in either the ambiance or the burgers. In the two days since he'd helped Mai win her Shadow Game, his mood had improved somewhat to the point where Téa could almost see _Yugi_ again somewhere under all the Pharaoh-ness. But with Marik's arrival, his gloominess had returned. He'd been quiet and sullen all the way out to the airport, and she'd noticed him shrink away a little when Marik clasped his shoulder in greeting at the baggage carousel in the international terminal. It worried her to see Yugi start to withdraw again, although she had to admit the jealous side of her couldn't help but be a little relieved to see that she wasn't the only one he didn't seem to want touching him.

At the diner, he stood silently to the side while Joey and Tristan shook hands with Marik, and he barely said two words to anyone until they ordered, letting Joey lead the small talk. Once the waitress left with their menus, he leaned back in his seat, crossed his arms in a way that Téa could only associate with Atem, and asked Marik point-blank, "We need to know exactly what happened in your Shadow Game with Mai. What did you do to her?"

Even Joey, who was infinitely more protective of Mai than the rest of them, seemed a little taken aback by Yugi's bluntness. Marik, however, took the question in stride. "You pretty much know that already. I called a Shadow Game and set the terms, which were that she lost the memory of a friend every time she lost a monster."

"But _how_ did you do that?" Joey asked, taking over.

Marik shrugged. "I can't exactly explain how you set terms of a Shadow Game. It would be like trying to explain how I keep my balance when I walk. It's just something I _do_."

Joey persisted. "Okay, but why that specifically? We saw you play three different Shadow Games with three different people and every one of them was different. Why was that the terms for Mai's?"

"Because it's what she most feared. The Millennium Items each had their own individual powers, as you all know. The Millennium Rod in particular allows the bearer access to other people's minds, but all the items could be used to call Shadow Games and to gain a certain amount of insight into the minds of one's opponent. It's how Shadow Games work. I'm sure the Pharaoh would agree." Marik cocked his head toward Yugi, who was silently watching the discussion. "Am I right? How many penalty games have you doled out? They all relied heavily on the individual's own personality, no?"

Yugi gave him the briefest of nods but said nothing.

Marik continued. "That's what a Shadow Game does—it works on a person's base fears and exploits them. Or conversely, it can root out the darkness in your heart and clear it out. It depends on the purpose of the person who calls the game."

"Like your first duel with Kaiba, right Yuge?" Joey asked.

Yugi finally joined back in the conversation. "Yes. And the one with Rebecca as well. But back to Mai's duel." He turned to Marik. "When she lost, you isolated her further, imprisoning her within arm's reach of her friends, but unable to get their attention."

"Correct as always, my Pharaoh." Marik nodded in a gentle mock bow.

Téa flinched at him addressing Yugi that way, especially now, and she saw Yugi's jaw tighten slightly. Before he could dwell on it too much, she jumped in. "How do other people keep exploiting that, then? First Dartz, and then Ramesses and his henchmen?"

"The same way I did, I'm guessing." Marik turned to her and leaned back, mimicking Yugi's posture. "It doesn't take dark magic to take advantage of someone's fears. A little pop psychology will do."

"This is a little more than pop psychology." Joey was clenching his fists as if looking for something to hit. "It's not like this guy is standing there and making fun of her to push her buttons. He's actually _making_ her have nightmares. And I'm guessing Dartz did the same thing. Somehow they used the Orichalcos stones to actually trigger these nightmares."

"Well, I don't know anything about Orichalcos stones."

"No, but they're relying on something you initiated," Yugi said.

"True, true." Marik unfolded his arms and drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. "You know that once you've played a Shadow Game, it leaves a mark, don't you?"

"Yeah, we got that lecture from Pegasus last May," Tristan said.

"Think of it like a river channel. Once the water has created a channel for itself, that's going to be where water flows first in the future. I'm not sure these are necessarily concerted attacks designed to make Mai have nightmares. More likely whatever dark power these stones harness just automatically flows through the same path."

Yugi nodded thoughtfully, but Joey leaned forward, agitated. "So why is it always Mai? Dartz, Evan, now this weird Shadow Game invading her dream. How the hell does someone go into someone else's dreams and turn that into a Dark Game?"

"That I don't know, but there are an infinite variety of Shadow Games. Your boss might be a better source for information on that," Marik said.

Tristan nodded. "We're already checking that angle."

"But why Mai?" Joey's knuckles were white now. "Why her and not us?"

Marik shrugged. "Path of least resistance?"

Joey scowled. "She's no damsel in distress. She can easily kick every one of our asses, and I ain't talking about no card game."

"I didn't say she was weak, but Battle City was the hardest on her. She was trapped in the Shadow Realm longer than anyone else."

Yugi blew out an impatient breath. "None of this is new, Marik. You didn't fly nearly seven thousand miles to tell us what we already know or could deduce on our own."

"No, I came to see Mai for myself."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not? I think I can help her."

Everyone looked at Yugi. He'd been insisting on keeping Marik away from Mai ever since he'd first told them Marik was coming, but he'd never really explained why he was so adamant. Mai herself didn't have a problem with Marik and bristled at the protectiveness. Even Joey didn't think it was a big deal, and he was usually the overprotective one.

"You started this." It didn't sound exactly like an accusation, but Yugi was definitely bristling himself. "You took her fears and made them real and that touched off everything else that happened to her. And frankly, I'm not sure she needs your help. She fought inside her worst nightmare and won. What could you possibly do for her now?"

"Are you saying that because she won one Dark Game it's over? No one knows better than you the infinite complexities of Shadow Games and the paths they leave behind, my Pharaoh."

Yugi shifted so fast no one even saw him move until his hands slammed down on the table making everyone jump. "DON'T CALL ME THAT. I'm no pharaoh."

They all froze, looking uncomfortably at each other. Téa chewed on her lip and Marik blinked, then looked down. "I apologize, Yugi. I didn't mean—"

The waitress chose that moment to bring their food. While she started handing out plates of burgers and fries, Marik slid out of the booth. "Excuse me. I'm going to go wash up."

When he and the waitress were both gone, Joey exploded. "What the hell was that?"

"Yeah, dude, why are you treating Marik like the enemy?" Tristan asked.

Yugi avoided their gazes and looked sideways out the window. "I'm not treating him like the enemy. I just don't want to be called that."

Joey leaned across the table. "Why? What's the big deal? You sure as hell are acting more like him than yourself, and you need to cut it the hell out." Téa saw Yugi stiffen, but Joey continued without pausing. "Besides, I've called you that before and you didn't go ballistic."

Yugi's eyes narrowed as he now met Joey's gaze in almost a challenge. "'Pharaoh' doesn't mean the same thing to Marik as it does to you, does it? To you, it's just a nickname for a friend, nothing more. But Marik was raised in the Tomb Keeper clan. He was taught from birth that his sole reason for existing was to serve 'the Pharaoh,' that he had to stay locked underground his entire childhood for 'the Pharaoh,' that he had to undergo a brutal and barbaric ritual where hieroglyphs were _carved into his back_, all in the name of 'the Pharaoh.' Do you have any idea what his life was like? Do you think all that anger he harbored—enough to create an entire separate dark personality—came from nowhere? That he hated 'the Pharaoh' for no reason at all? Well, I saw where he grew up when I was in Egypt. I saw how he lived because of 'the Pharaoh,' and I really don't want to be connected to that."

"Yuge—" But Joey stopped as if he didn't quite know what else to say.

Téa did, though. "It's not your fault."

Yugi went back to looking out the window. "I know, I wasn't born yet—"

"No, I mean it isn't _Atem's_ fault," she clarified, and he looked at her now. "It isn't _either_ of your fault. Atem didn't ask for the Tomb Keepers to do what they did. He was trapped inside the Millennium Puzzle long before any of that happened."

"He was the _pharaoh_." Yugi clenched his jaw. "They thought the pharaoh was god on earth! Everything revolved around him and his whims. I don't want to be that, do you understand? Egypt was built on the backs of the people so that the _pharaohs_ could have monuments to their glory and so their _Kas_ could enjoy a cushy afterlife."

Téa wanted to shake him. "And you're an archaeologist! You know better than to judge an ancient culture on modern values!"

"Wrong is wrong. That doesn't change over time."

"He did the best he could for his people—all of them—given the tools he had available to him, and you know that. He sacrificed his _eternity_ to save them!"

"Yuge, what gives?" Joey looked less irritated now and more concerned. "Since when do you have issues with the Pharaoh? He's the _other you_. The guy who… who—" He floundered, searching for the correct descriptor. "—who's the _other you_! You've been more depressed than I've ever seen you the past week because of what was done to him, and you couldn't even think of anything else but getting him back, and now all a sudden you're dissing him? That's just not like you, pal."

Tristan nodded in agreement. "No doubt. You never have a bad word to say about your _enemies_, let alone your… your _other self_." He threw his hands up in the air and Téa sympathized with the futility of trying to find any other phrase to describe the importance of Yugi's and Atem's relationship to each other. Their names for each other, 'partner' and 'other me,' were the only things that could even scratch the surface.

Yugi closed his eyes and rubbed them with one hand as if nursing a headache.

"It's not your fault," Téa repeated firmly. "I want him back, too, but you didn't cause this, and I'm not going to let you keep beating yourself up for it."

Joey looked back and forth between the two of them. "Why do I get the feeling you two are suddenly having a whole different conversation?"

Yugi met Téa's eyes for a moment and then he turned to Joey and Tristan. "Because I haven't told you everything." His shoulders slumped and he looked down at the table. "I should have, but I keep hoping… I don't know what I keep hoping. That we'll just find the damn ritual to fix this and I won't have explain to you for the second time in your lives how I somehow managed to lose your best friend."

"Say what?"

Téa shook her head. "You don't know that, and it isn't your fault this time anyway."

"Would one of you like to clue us in here?" Tristan asked.

"I've lost half my memories, ever since Luxor. But they're the wrong half. The Yugi half. I feel like somehow we got switched, like I'm the wrong me." He looked between the two of them, flinching a little as if he expected one of them to punch him, but they both just looked confused.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Joey asked, putting voice to both his and Tristan's bewilderment. "How could you be the wrong you?"

"I wish I knew. I just know that I can't remember any of the details of Yugi's life as if I lived them myself. I can only remember what _the Pharaoh _did those three years we were together." He said the word _Pharaoh_ like it was something foul he had to swallow to be polite.

"Whoa." Tristan sat heavily back against the back of the booth. "So wait. If you're… then is Yugi in…?" He trailed off, not wanting to say what they all feared any more than Yugi did.

"I don't know. I'm not even sure who I am. I just know who I feel like I am."

"But is that… you switching places like that… is that even possible?"

"How many things that have happened to us over the past six years are possible?"

"But Yuge." Joey looked like he was floundering, grasping for something to hang onto. "You can't… Atem, he wasn't even _here_. He was in the afterlife when that attack happened. How could he be _here_ and you—the regular Yugi, I mean—be… _shit_."

"I don't know."

"Whatever is going on, you did not cause this," Téa repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. "Whichever you you are, you were in England or the afterlife when this was done _to_ you. To _us_. Whichever you you are, _Ramesses_ took away something that's precious to all of us."

Yugi opened his mouth to reply, but then closed it again as Marik returned to the table. The Egyptian looked around at the four of them and frowned. "I take it I missed something."

"No," Téa answered for all of them. "We're just frustrated from everything that's been happening. First the tomb desecrations, then Mai sucked into a Shadow Game."

"Yes, and I owe you an apology," Yugi said. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm discouraged that we haven't had any luck getting the other me back from the Shadow Realm, and you calling me that..."

Marik nodded. "Of course, it was thoughtless of me."

A silence settled over the table and they all picked at their food, no one really eating. Joey in particular was looking ill, like Luxor all over again, and Téa thought of how sick she felt when Yugi first told her that it might be the real Yugi who was gone. Eventually Marik tried again to convince them that he could help Mai if he could see her face-to-face, but Yugi just told him it was Mai's decision and they would talk it over with her. Marik reluctantly agreed.

After lunch, as they stood at the cash register waiting to pay, Yugi mentioned dropping Marik off at Duke's apartment, but Marik told them he had other things he wanted to do in San Francisco and he'd find his own way to Duke's later that evening. He asked Téa and Yugi to keep his luggage and to drop him off at the nearest Bay Area Rapid Transit station before they headed back into the city, refusing any offer they made of simply driving him wherever he wanted to go. "I've never been to San Francisco before. I'd like to get the lay of the land on my own."

"Do you want some ideas for good places to see?" Tristan asked, and Téa could tell he was trying to restore some normalcy after the uncomfortable lunch.

"No, that's all right. I like to wing it."

As he spoke, a small child ran out of the ladies' room, apparently fleeing from his rather haggard-looking mother. He blew past Téa, causing her to stumble into Marik, who reached out, grabbing her arm to steady her. As soon as he touched her, his hand locked onto her forearm. She felt an odd sensation, like water draining out of her, and Marik's eyes locked on hers for a moment, a strange look there. "I've an errand to run. Big Sister sent them here."

Téa jerked her arm away. "What did you say?"

No one seemed to have notice anything strange, however. The mother threw an apology at Téa between threats to her wayward child, while Joey and Tristan snickered.

Marik looked completely normal. "I'll be back at Duke's this evening. And please tell Mai to consider dueling me. I really do think it will bring her some closure."

When they were alone in the car after dropping Marik off at the San Bruno BART station, Téa asked Yugi, "Is there something weird going on with Marik?"

"Why?" Yugi was looking out the passenger side window as Téa drove.

She frowned, rolling her shoulders. "I dunno. Him calling you 'Pharaoh' and all that was kinda freaky, and you've been twitchy about him coming all day."

Yugi still kept his gaze focused out the window. "He just… he makes me think of Luxor, and I don't want to think of Luxor."

"Don't make me say 'it's not your fault' again."

"I know. But it's been ten days since the tomb desecrations, and we're no closer to finding a ritual. I'm afraid by the time we do find something, it will be too late."

"Don't you _dare_." She swallowed hard, glancing over at him. "Don't you give up, Yugi Mutou. You have got to snap out of this funk."

"I'm not giving up. I'm just wondering… if I'm the wrong me, maybe Ishizu knows a way to switch us back. If one of us has to be in the Shadow Realm…"

She gripped the steering wheel tighter "Just _don't_. We're not done with this until _both_ of you are safe, do you understand me?"

This time Yugi didn't reply. He just kept looking out the passenger side window.


	5. Chasing Dragons

**5. Chasing Dragons**

For much of the drive back home, Tristan and Joey were silent, each chewing over what Yugi had told them. It was Tristan who broke the silence first. "So do you think it's possible? That somehow they got switched and it's the… it's Atem who's with us and Yugi who—"

"Don't even go there. Although it sure would explain why he's not been himself lately—literally. But it doesn't make any sense. I—"

Tristan glanced over at Joey when he cut himself off with a groan. He was slumped over and leaning against the door, his face somewhat pasty.

"Dude, you look awful. If you're gonna hurl, give me some warning so I can pull over."

Joey scowled at him. "Your concern touches me deeply."

"So what's the deal? You can't have food poisoning. You didn't eat enough."

"Doesn't just the thought of Yugi… doesn't it make you sick?"

"Well yeah, but not enough to actually puke. You look like you did at the tombs."

"Yeah, well it's the same thing again, isn't it?" Joey asked. "Only instead of Atem, who eats dark magic for breakfast, it might be Yugi who's trapped. Remember what happened to him in Pegasus's Shadow Game?"

Tristan gritted his teeth, not even wanting to think about it. "That was a long time ago. Yugi's gotten a lot stronger since then. He defeated Bakura in that Dark Game in the Memory World by himself, and he was fine."

"Still… Yugi." Joey rested his head in his hands. "Bad stuff always seems worse if it happens to him."

"He'd have a cow if he heard you say that."

"I know." He shifted his position, trying to straighten up a little. "I dunno, I'm just so tired. I think all the not sleeping 'cause of the stuff that happened in Luxor and then the stuff that happened to Mai and just… everything is getting to me. I need a nap when we get home."

When they arrived back at their penthouse, Mai and Serenity were waiting in the common room. They started to ask about the lunch with Marik, but then noticed Joey.

"Ooh, hon, you don't look too good," Mai said, a hint of worry cutting through her caustic tone.

"Yeah, I don't feel too good. I'm gonna go up to my apartment and take a nap."

"_Your_ apartment? Do you even know where it is?" Tristan asked.

"Yeah, I know where it is." Joey shot him what probably was supposed to be a threatening look, but without any energy behind it, it came off more like a grimace.

"Do you need anything?" Serenity asked her brother.

"Nah, just a nap." He took a couple of steps toward the stairs, then changed his mind and turned around. "I think I'll use the elevator."

Mai continued to watch the elevator after the doors had shut behind him, a slight frown creasing her forehead. "I hope he gets some sleep. It seems like once I started sleeping normal again, he stopped."

"None of us has been right since all of this stuff started happening," Serenity said.

"So what did Marik have to say?" Mai asked Tristan.

He shrugged as he flopped down on the semi-circular sofa across from the two women. "Not much, actually, mostly stuff we already knew. Dark Games play on people's worst fears—"

The phone rang, interrupting him, and Tristan reached back to answer it. "Industrial Illusions, Tristan Taylor speaking."

"Hello, Tristan. It's Professor Hawkins."

"Oh, hey, Professor. You back in Frisco?"

"No, no, I'm still in Boston, but Rebecca should be back. I'm calling to make sure she arrived safely. She hasn't turned on her cell phone yet, so I thought I'd try here."

Tristan put his hand over the phone's mouthpiece. "It's the professor looking for Rebecca."

"Duke went to the airport to pick her up. They should be back soon," Serenity said.

He uncovered the phone and put it to his ear again. "Hey Professor, I guess Duke went to pick her up, but they're not back yet. But why are you still in Boston?"

"Ishizu called a few days ago and asked me to go back to Egypt to help her. I just got back to the airport, actually. My flight leaves in about three hours."

"But I thought you were gonna help Yugi with the Egyptian texts. We've gotta find a ritual that will get—" He paused, remembering what Yugi had told them at lunch. "—that will get the other Yugi out of the Shadow Realm," he finished, deciding that description worked for whichever soul was actually trapped.

"Well, something else rather urgent has come up. Ishizu believes that somehow, somewhere, someone managed to reconnect with an ancient version of themselves, much like Yugi and Atem did when Yugi solved the Millennium Puzzle. It's rather complicated, but Ishizu feels it's important for us to try and find who this person is."

"Okaaaaay." Tristan didn't even bother to try and make sense of any of that. All these ancient and modern versions of people were starting to make his head hurt, and what with Joey's earlier assertion that Sara Drake was connected to the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, he'd had enough of multiple personalities—

His eyes widened. "Wait. Did you say someone reconnected with their past self? Would that be anything like, say, us meeting the reincarnation of the woman whose _Ka_ became Blue-Eyes White Dragon?"

Mai and Serenity were looking at him now, Mai with curiosity and Serenity in confusion. The professor merely replied, "Why, yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about."

"Okay, then I think I can save you a trip to Luxor. It's Sara Drake."

There was a short pause. "Excuse me?"

"Sara Drake. We found out this morning she's Blue-Eyes. Or, at least that's what Joey said. Anyway, we're pretty sure she's this girl we saw in the Memory World. Her name was Kisara, and the priest-Kaiba dude saved her from being stoned by an angry mob. Joey says Kaiba said she's where Blue-Eyes came from."

"That's… that's unbelievable!" The professor sounded stunned. "Are you sure? Is she there?"

"She's staying with Kaiba, actually," Tristan said, but saw Mai shake her head.

"If he's looking for Sara, she's already gone by now. She called a couple of hours ago to say she was flying back to Cairo today. I think the whole 'you have a past life and, oh, by the way, you're a Duel Monster' kinda freaked her out."

The professor was still talking. "If she's staying with Kaiba, then she'd have connected with the Blue-Eyes White Dragon! It makes perfect sense—"

"Okay, scratch that Professor. Mai just said Sara's on her way back to Cairo."

"Cairo! That's the worst place for her to be! If Ramesses finds out about her, she could be in great danger!"

"What? Why would she be in danger?"

"It's rather complicated, but if she is who you say she is and she's reconnected with the piece of her spirit that is the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, then she has unknowingly helped us, thereby making things more difficult for Ramesses. If he finds out—"

"Yeah, okay, I'm with you, Professor."

"Tristan, do you know what flight she's on? Perhaps I can intercept her wherever she has a layover. She might even be on my flight out of Frankfurt tomorrow."

Tristan looked at Mai. "Do you know what flight she's on?"

"Just that it left at three. I'm not even sure which airport. She could've just as easily been at Oakland or San Jose as SFO."

Tristan put his mouth back to the phone. "Sorry, Professor, all we know is that her flight left at three. We don't even know which airport." He then had a thought. "But Kaiba might. She was staying with him after all."

"All right, I'll try there, then. And if she should happen to call while laying over somewhere, tell her that under no circumstances should she return to Cairo. Give her my cell phone number and tell her to call me."

"Got it. And do you want me to have Rebecca call you when she gets in?"

"Yes, thank you," the professor said, and Tristan had the feeling he wasn't really listening any longer as the phone disconnected.

Mai crossed her arms, drumming her fingertips on them. "What was that all about?"

"Yeah, what's all this about Sara and Blue-Eyes White Dragon?" Serenity asked.

"It's a long story," Tristan began.

* * *

_I'm getting too old for this_, Arthur Hawkins thought with a grimace as he swallowed his evening medication. It was bad enough that the visit with Rebecca's maternal grandparents hadn't gone well. They still believed he had somehow ruined her life by 'forcing her to grow up too quickly,' as they had put it, as if he had had any say in the matter whatsoever. It was worse that he had to put off yet again his long overdue discussion with Rebecca. First he'd told himself he'd wait until she turned fourteen. Then it was after the holidays. Then after the tournament and the trip to Boston. Now Ishizu's request for him to go to Egypt instead of returning to San Francisco with Rebecca had forced yet another delay, and given the attitude of her other grandparents…

He sighed. And now this. Sara Drake, his colleague's protégé, the reincarnation of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon? The very Duel Monster that had sealed his friendship with Solomon Mutou? She was exactly the person Ishizu had asked him to look for, which would be fabulous news if only she weren't flying into possible danger right at this very moment. If only she had waited one more day before returning to Cairo.

But what was done was done. If he could track down her flight, perhaps he could get word to her or even meet her somewhere before she got to Cairo.

He had no luck with Seto Kaiba, however; no matter how hard he insisted it was urgent, Kaiba's secretary was adamant that he wasn't taking any calls. After that, he tried their home number, which he had thanks to the fact that young Mokuba Kaiba was his granddaughter's best friend and sometimes boyfriend. Not wanting to alarm the boy, he didn't mention that he feared Sara might be in danger in Egypt, just that it was urgent that he speak with her immediately. Unfortunately, Mokuba didn't know any of Sara's flight information and was certain his brother wouldn't know, either.

Frustrated, Arthur looked at his watch. It was getting close to seven o'clock, which meant it was almost two AM in Cairo. But if anyone might know Sara's flight information, it would be Raymond.

His old friend sounded surprisingly alert when he answered the phone. "This is Professor Julius."

"Raymond, this is Arthur. I'm so sorry to bother you at such a late hour, but I'm afraid this is rather urgent. I need to know what flight Sara Drake is on."

"Sara? Why do you need to know her flight information?" He spoke quickly, as if he were a little rushed.

"It's something of a long story, but I'm afraid she might be in danger if she returns to Cairo."

"Danger? What sort of danger?"

"As I said, it's a long story. If you know her flight information and where she has a layover, I'd really appreciate it."

"I'm sorry Arthur, I don't. All I know is she is due to arrive at seven tomorrow evening. Well, actually, I suppose it's this evening," he corrected himself. "I don't even know where she's coming from, just that she's arriving at seven. I'm going to pick her up at eight to give her time to clear customs. Now what's this about?"

Arthur checked his own flight itinerary. He was supposed to land in Cairo at six for a two-hour layover before the short hour-long flight to Luxor. He was arriving from Frankfurt, and it seemed unlikely that two flights from Frankfurt would arrive within an hour of each other, which meant she was most likely connecting somewhere else.

"Arthur?" Raymond sounded impatient. "I don't have time—"

"All right, Raymond, I'm going to be arriving in Cairo at six. I'll meet her there, so you don't need to bother coming to get her."

"You're coming to Cairo?"

"Actually, I was headed to Luxor to see Ishizu, but it's imperative that I speak with Sara as soon as possible."

"Ishizu? Then you haven't—" He stopped, and Arthur frowned.

"Then I haven't what, Raymond?"

"Don't bother going on to Luxor. I'll meet you in Cairo."

"Why?"

"I just returned from there myself. A lot has happened in the last few days. I don't have time to explain it all right now, but I need to know why you feel Sara is in danger."

Arthur sighed. "It's difficult to explain, but I believe the man responsible for desecrating Atem's and Seto's tombs will perceive her as a threat."

"Why? Because she found the vandalism? We've been keeping that under wraps."

"That's not why, no. Well, I suppose it's related. Her finding the vandalism may have been the result rather the cause. She has a deeper connection to the ancient past than mere scholarly interest."

"How so?" Raymond asked, and Arthur was surprised by his serious tone. Usually his friend had no patience for anything that smacked of "romantic nonsense," but he seemed to be earnestly concerned.

"She has a bond to the dragon depicted in the Memory Stone," Arthur said.

"The dragon… isn't that the one you claim Maximillion Pegasus used as inspiration for the Blue-Eyes White Dragon?"

"Yes." He didn't bother to correct the fine details.

"Arthur, what kind of bond are you talking about?"

"Come on, Raymond, think about it. Her obsession with dragons, her interest in this particular period, the fact that she walked to Seto's tomb in her sleep the very night it was desecrated." Actually, when he strung all those facts about her together like that, he was embarrassed that he hadn't figured it out sooner.

There was a long pause. "You can't be serious, Arthur."

There was the skepticism he was used to. "It doesn't matter if you believe it or not. The tomb robber will. And if he puts together everything I just did, I believe she could be in serious danger."

Raymond was silent for another moment. "All right. I will meet you at the airport when you arrive at six, and we can meet Sara together."

"It really isn't necessary. I'd rather just get her on a plane somewhere out of Egypt. Back to San Francisco or to England or anywhere."

"I need to see you anyway. And she's my student, Arthur. If this were Yugi Mutou we were talking about, would you not see to this personally?"

Arthur exhaled slowly. "You're right, of course. Well then, I'll see you tomorrow evening at Cairo International."

"Yes, yes." He sounded rushed again. "Thank you for calling, Arthur." And then he was gone.


	6. Origin

**6. Origin**

"Sara Drake is Blue-Eyes White Dragon. It explains so much." Téa shook her head as she tried to absorb the story Tristan and Mai had just told her and Yugi. "I knew she looked familiar."

"And that she had a reason to be in Seto's tomb." Yugi grunted and leaned back in his seat. "I should have realized as soon as Ishizu mentioned the 'healed rift' that Sara was a likely source. We knew there was some reason she was drawn into this. If I'd have remembered to tell you guys about that, you would've known she might be in danger as soon as Joey realized who she was, and you could've kept her here."

Téa glared at him. "Don't you even _think_ about making this into another reason to beat yourself up."

"I'm sure she'll be fine," Serenity said, ever the optimist. "Professor Hawkins will find her, and even if he doesn't, how likely is it that Ramesses has figured out who she is? He might not even know about the whole 'rift' thing anyway."

"He'd have noticed if the Shadow Realm was more closed to him than he'd expected," Yugi said. "We need to find a way to stop him from calling these weird Dark Games. What did you and Duke find out from Pegasus?"

Serenity leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands. "Well, he's created several different kinds of Shadow Games, everything from the straight-forward duel with Kaiba to the really freaky one through the videotape that took Yugi's grandfather's soul. Probably the most similar to the way we were locked out of Mai's Dark Game was the Duelist Kingdom final where he locked everyone but you out."

"But we broke through whatever Pegasus put up in that duel," Téa pointed out. "Because of our bond to Yugi. So why couldn't you break through? You have a bond with Mai."

"Pegasus used this sort of general shield that was supposed to lock out anyone, never considering that your bond to each other would be powerful enough to overcome it. He thinks that Ramesses has already figured out that our greatest strength is our teamwork, so he would've worked out some way to specifically block us from reaching out to each other, and to our guardians, too. Chances are, even inside the Shadow Game, we're locked away from our monsters. Once inside Mai's game, you couldn't call Dark Magician, could you, Yugi?"

Yugi shrugged. "I _was_ Dark Magician, so I didn't even try."

"But you did get into the game. That's something," Mai said.

"Well, yeah." Serenity sat up straight again. "He used to be the bearer of the Millennium Puzzle, so he can call Dark Games."

"Which is pretty much what I did," Yugi said. "I basically called a Dark Game, and that was able to get me into the one Ramesses had already called for Mai."

Tristan grunted in frustration. "Doesn't really help the rest of us who can't call Dark Games, does it?"

Serenity shook her head. "But that's a separate issue. We might not be able to call Dark Games, but we _can_ summon our monsters, and that's what he's blocking. The good news is that Pegasus thinks there has to be _some_ way around it, something only Ramesses knows, otherwise he wouldn't be able to establish a connection to Reshef and be able to play by proxy the way he does."

"A key." Yugi narrowed his eyes, thinking. "There must be some sort of key to calling our monsters. We just need to find it."

"Maybe Marik knows. What did he have to say, anyway?" Mai asked Yugi.

Téa glanced at him to gauge his reaction, but he just shrugged again. "Nothing we didn't already know. He did ask to see you and duel you."

"Duel me? Why?"

"He thinks it would give you closure."

She cocked her head at him. "I take it you don't."

"It's not my decision. It's yours."

"You didn't seem to have a problem making my decision for me about meeting him for lunch in the first place," she said tartly.

Yugi gripped his hands into fists and pounded on his knees. "It's just that I don't understand any of this, Mai! It's all mixed together with the other me being dragged to the Shadow Realm and I'm tired of watching people I love forced into Dark Games because of me!"

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Téa tried to put her hand on Yugi's shoulder, but he shrugged it off and got up from his seat. "I'm sorry. I think I should just get back to reading through those texts. We're running out of time to find something that will bring back the other me." Without looking at any of them, he headed upstairs to the library.

Téa bit her lip as she watched him disappear up the stairs. When he was gone, Mai leaned back in her seat, shaking her head. "Wow. I don't think I've seen him in this bad a funk since he lost to Kaiba at Duelist Kingdom."

Téa tried not to wince at the irony. Back then, Yugi had been upset about the presence of his other self, a spirit he didn't yet understand or trust, and who up until that point had controlled him at will. Now it was the _loss_ of his other self that made him quite literally only half of who he was—and unsure of _which_ half on top of everything.

Tristan stood up, looking restless. "I don't know about you guys, but I gotta find a way to do something. We keep researching Shadow Games or those damn Egyptian texts, but we don't find anything useful. What can we _do_?"

Before anyone could offer a suggestion, the elevator dinged and slid open, spitting an energetic Rebecca Hawkins into the room. "Hello, everyone, I'm back! Didja miss me?"

Duke followed behind, dragging three suitcases, one of them bigger than Rebecca herself. As soon as he crossed the threshold into the room, he dropped everything and collapsed on top of the pile. "That's it, I'm done. You can find some other errand boy to schlep everything up to your room."

"Oh, who cares about the stupid bags?" She looked around the room. "Where's Yugi? Poor darling, I wanna hear all about what happened in Luxor—"

"Whoa, hold on there." Téa stood up quickly, blocking Rebecca as she moved into the room. Considering how badly Rebecca had responded to his loss during the Orichalcos mess, Téa thought it might not be the best thing for her to go rushing into the library while Yugi was in a funk without some advance warning. "There's a lot that's been going on while you've been gone, Rebecca."

"I know. Duke told me all about Mai's Dark Game and everything, but it's Yugi I'm worried about." She tried to push past, but Téa refused to budge.

"Rebecca, you need to appreciate what's going on here first. What happened to Atem was pretty horrific, and it's really affected Yugi. He's… not himself right now. So why don't you take a minute to relax and get caught up on everything that's going on before you barge in and see him, okay?"

Rebecca stopped trying to get past Téa and looked up at her, frowning. "What do you mean, 'not himself'?"

Téa exchanged glances with Tristan, wondering how much to say. The others should probably be filled in, but it was really Yugi's place to inform them, not hers. "He's just been really moody and depressed."

Rebecca's face immediately grew more somber. "Like he was on our dig last year. Poor _Onii-chan_."

Duke heaved himself up from the pile of bags and came up behind Rebecca, resting his hands on her shoulders. "Come on, Becks, let's just sit down and relax a minute, okay? Let Téa get you up to speed." He looked at Téa. "And I wanna hear about lunch with Marik."

"Lunch with Marik?" Rebecca narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean? He's not here in San Francisco, is he?"

"Yeah, he flew in a few hours before you did," Téa said. "He thinks maybe he can help Mai."

Rebecca blew out an irritated breath. "Well, no wonder Yugi's moody. I was worried about that when you all went to Luxor, but I didn't think Marik would come here, too."

Téa glanced at the others, all of whom were suddenly as interested as she was. "Why would Marik being here make Yugi moody?"

"'Cause he was the one who started it all on our dig." Rebecca grimaced. "Man, that was _bad_."

Téa frowned. "Rebecca, what are you talking about? What was bad?" She motioned toward the sofa. "Here, sit down and explain." She sat down around the semi-circular sofa with Mai, Tristan, and Serenity.

Duke and Rebecca joined them, Rebecca sitting on the edge of the seat as she launched into her story. "Well, before we went out into the desert last November, we went down to Luxor to see how the restoration work on Atem's and everyone's tombs was going. We stayed with the Ishtars for a couple of days, and everything was cool. They even made an American Thanksgiving dinner for us, and Marik was really nice and friendly, and he is _such_ a total hottie, although I'm pretty sure he's gay—"

"Rebecca." Téa crossed her arms and drummed her fingers on them. "Can you skip to the part where things were bad?"

She scowled. "I'm getting to that. The day we left, on our way out of town, Marik said there was one last site we should see. He took me, Yugi, and Grandpa to this underground shrine in the middle of the desert. He said it was the ancient home of the Tomb Keepers clan and that he grew up there. He sorta got creepy about it, which I can kinda understand 'cause he had a totally twisted childhood. But he started calling Yugi 'my Pharaoh' all of a sudden, and Yugi just felt so bad about everything that happened to Marik all because of the Pharaoh, like he took personal responsibility for all of it."

Téa's eyes once again met Tristan's. Yugi's explosion at lunch suddenly made a lot more sense.

"When Grandpa saw how it was getting to Yugi, he got us out of there, and Marik went back to Luxor while we met up with the others in the Valley of the Kings and headed out west into the desert. We thought that was the end of it, although Yugi was kinda quiet, and Gramps and I were still a little creeped out. We didn't realize how bad it was until we camped for the night. That was when Yugi had this major nightmare. Woke everyone up screaming."

"Nightmare?" Mai looked startled, and Téa felt a little surprised herself. He'd never mentioned having nightmares in Egypt before. True, he didn't like to talk about that trip much at all, but still, it seemed like something he would've mentioned.

Rebecca nodded at Mai. "Yeah, a really bad one, and it was weird, too, because judging by what he was screaming, I don't think he was dreaming about what happened to Marik. At first I thought so, 'cause he was shouting 'It's my fault, it's all my fault!' but then he switched to Japanese and kept calling out, _'Aibou!'_ So I figured… I dunno, I thought it might have been about the Ceremonial Battle and he was calling the Pharaoh."

Téa closed her eyes, her heart aching in her chest. "No. Yugi never called him '_aibou_.' That's he called _Yugi_. If Yugi was saying '_aibou_' in his sleep, whatever he was dreaming must've been from the _Pharaoh's_ point of view. Something that was _his_ fault, not Yugi's. Like the Orichalcos duel."

"No, that can't be right." There was a dark timbre to Mai's voice that caused Téa to open her eyes. Mai's jaw was clenched and there was something ominous in her expression. "I specifically asked him if he ever had any nightmares about the Orichalcos duel. He said the only time he dreamt about that was right after it had happened."

"That's right, he did say that," Serenity said.

Téa frowned. "Well, it was definitely something from the Pharaoh's perspective, not Yugi's. That name is very special to Yugi, and he would never use it in any other way. He won't even use the word _partner_ in English. Did you see how he twitched on the plane to London when Joey said they'd be 'partners' if they opened a game shop here?"

Mai shook her head. "Something still isn't right. He made a point of saying he never dreamt anything really painful and terrifying like my nightmare. And when was the last time Yugi Mutou ever lied about anything? Ever?"

"He wasn't lying," Rebecca said. "He doesn't remember."

Téa gave Rebecca an incredulous look. "He doesn't remember? Waking up the entire camp screaming doesn't sound like the kind of thing you forget."

"Yeah, but when Grandpa tried to calm him down, he couldn't. But we had this guide with us, Kamuzu, who was this weird old Egyptian guy that Ishizu recommended. He made Yugi drink something with some herbs or something in it, and that calmed him down and made him fall asleep again. The next morning, he didn't remember the dream or waking everyone up or anything. Man, did Professor Julius have a complete cow about that. You met him in Luxor, right? He's kind of… rigid about stuff like magic and ancient healing potions and that sort of thing. He fired the guy on the spot for giving a student 'drugs.' But Yugi never remembered any of it and was better, at least for a little while, so Grandpa didn't want to tell him and upset him again. Then things got bad again, and I was so wishing Kamuzu hadn't left, 'cause I would've killed for something that would make us forget and stop everything from being so _creepy_."

Tristan leaned forward. "So that whole trip, all that darkness you guys have described, it all started with Marik acting weird and calling Yugi 'my Pharaoh,' and then Yugi having a major nightmare that he doesn't remember?"

"Mm hm."

Tristan looked at Téa. "And Marik was doing the 'my Pharaoh' thing at lunch today, too, which I don't ever remember him doing before, do you?"

Téa shook her head.

"Okay, this is definitely starting to get a little too _Nightmare on Elm Street _meets_ Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ for my tastes," Mai said. "Maybe this is why Yugi got all weird about me going near Marik—he was projecting his own discomfort onto me. Although now I'm thinking maybe I'm glad I didn't go with you guys."

Téa's brow furrowed as the pieces started to come together. "Wait a minute. When Yugi tried describing to me the weirdness you guys went through on that dig, he said he felt like he was disconnected from himself. Like he was more like the Pharaoh and less like himself."

"Yeah, that's a good way to describe it," Rebecca agreed. "He was all moody and, I dunno, kinda antagonistic and got irritated easily."

"Which is exactly how he's been lately. He's just not been all there. Told me he couldn't keep all the pieces together—" Tristan stopped, a dark look hardening his features. "Son of a _bitch_. Marik's Shadow Game!"

"What?" Mai frowned in confusion, and Téa wasn't sure what he was getting at, either.

Tristan looked at Mai. "You're not the only one Marik played in a Shadow Game. He played against Yugi, too. Or more correctly, the Pharaoh."

"So?" Duke gave him a blank look.

"So when he played Mai, he took away all her friends, but do you remember what he took away from the Pharaoh?"

Téa felt her stomach drop as she remembered their duel. "Oh, my God. He took away _Yugi_."

Mai tossed her hair over her shoulder. "You wanna recap for those of us who were vacationing in the Shadow Realm for a good chunk of the Battle City finals?"

Téa put her hand to her forehead. "While the Pharaoh dueled Marik—_Yami_ Marik, actually—their two 'light' halves, Yugi and the real Marik, were sort of chained up beside them. Whenever the Pharaoh lost Life Points, a piece of Yugi disappeared." She started to feel nauseous. "Which is exactly what is happening to him now. He feels like Yugi has disappeared and only the Pharaoh is left. It all started with the tomb desecrations."

"No, that's not when it started." Tristan looked grim. "He was normal—well, I mean he was grieving, but he was still _Yugi_—up until we got to Luxor. When we saw _Marik_."

Duke held up his hands. "Okay, wait. What are we saying here? That Marik is the cause of all this? 'Cause I know sometimes it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys around here without a scorecard, but last time I checked, Marik was on _our_ side."

"Besides, if Marik is some kind of trigger, how does that explain my nightmares?" Mai asked. "I never saw Marik."

"Yes you did."

They all looked at Rebecca, who had a slight frown on her face as she regarded Mai over the tops of her glasses. "Don't you remember? You saw him in London."

"In London?" Téa shook her head. "What on earth are you talking about?"

Rebecca turned to Téa. "You know, at the tournament. He bumped into Mai just before her first round. I saw him and thought it was really weird that he was in London, but when I heard about the tomb desecrations, I realized he must've come looking for Yugi."

"Rebecca," Téa said slowly, "Marik didn't come looking for Yugi. Ishizu called your grandfather on the phone. Marik was in Greece—" She snapped her mouth shut.

"No, he was in London," Rebecca insisted. "I mean, how many other platinum blond Egyptians do you know that walk around wearing hooded cloaks?"

"I remember someone running into me before my first duel, but it was crowded and I never saw who it was. You're telling me it was Marik? You're absolutely certain?"

"Positive."

Mai looked at the others. "'Cause that was the night the nightmares started."

Duke's eyebrows went up. "So both Mai and Yugi have been reliving the symptoms of their Dark Games with Marik after coming into contact with him."

There was a small gasp from the corner of the sofa, and they all turned to see Serenity twisting her hands in her lap, her eyes wide and fearful. "Not just Mai and Yugi. Joey, too. Joey dueled Marik."

"What happened in his duel?" Mai's voice sounded tight enough to break.

"He got hurt." Serenity looked pale. "Physically hurt. He was so weak and sick…."

Tristan swore. "Those glowing pink ropes! Every time his monster got hit, it drained energy from him."

"Sick and no energy. Like he's been since Luxor," Téa said.

"Like when he came home from lunch today." Mai gripped the edges of her seat, her knuckles turning white. "With Marik. And now he's taking a nap…"

Duke blinked. "Anyone else thinking maybe we should go wake up Joey?"

Mai, Serenity, and Tristan were up from their seats before he could even finish the sentence. Duke followed, but Téa took Rebecca by the arm. "You come with me. We need to go check on Yugi."


	7. Another Dark Game

**7. Another Dark Game**

The pull from the shadows had taken Monarch by surprise, waking him from a deep sleep. It was the middle of the afternoon in San Francisco; he hadn't been expecting an opportunity for another Dark Game for at least several more hours. His servant must have been even more effective than he'd hoped.

Then there was the other news demanding his attention; rather shocking, that, and he'd been so distracted he almost lost his window of opportunity. But the shadows were insistent, and he put everything else out of his mind and connected with Reshef the Dark Being. Together, they traveled through the swirling darkness, seeking out the one his servant had prepared for him. Two paths called out to him, and he stood at the crossroads, debating. One led to the desert, the other to the ocean. The desert was _so_ tempting; he could almost taste the battle that awaited him there. One battle—this battle—and it would all be over.

* * *

Yugi snapped closed the book he was holding and leaned his head against the bookshelf, closing his eyes in frustration. He'd found a fragment of a legend that had looked promising: the tale of a heroic warrior who had died in battle, his body mutilated by the enemy and sent back to the pharaoh as a warning. The story was incomplete, so Yugi went back into the book stacks to cross-reference it in a book Pegasus had about myths and warriors, but when he finally found another reference to it, there was no mention of rescuing the warrior's soul from Duat.

Another dead end. Ten days since the tomb desecrations, and they were still no closer to finding a solution. _Ten days._ He was beginning to think returning to California had been a mistake. If he went back to Egypt and dug up the Millennium Puzzle, there must be a way to seal his spirit again….

_Damn_. He banged his head against the shelf. _Damn_. Pulling back, he turned abruptly and with a snarl, threw the book against the wall at the end of the row. It hit the wall, then fell to the floor, pages fluttering. He stared at it a moment, then stomped over to retrieve it, but when he reached the wall, he leaned his head against it instead. Fatigue washed over him and he closed his eyes, turning to slide down the wall until he was sitting beside the opened book, his head resting on his knees. There was nothing in these books, nothing in Ishizu's texts, nothing anywhere that would _fix_ this.

His hand slipped into his pocket and he closed his fingers around the little stone top as his own face swam before him—no, not his face, _Yugi's_ face—and his heart ached. _I don't know what to do, _Aibou_. I'm so sorry._

_What good is that now? I'm the one who's been locked away forever…_

"Yugi!"

* * *

Monarch halted his advance as the path before him abruptly closed, the desert disappearing into the mist. He allowed himself only a small pang of regret before he took the other path to the ocean. There would be time for the desert later, and if those fools used the same strategy as they had to get Valentine out of her Dark Game, then he'd be able to reopen the path to desert even sooner.

Then he was there, standing before his opponent above the clear blue sea, and he drew the witless boy into the game.

_Let's duel._

* * *

Yugi jerked his head up, opening his eyes.

"Yugi, where are you?"

It was Téa, he realized, and she sounded a little panicked. Frowning, he got up off the floor. "I'm here, back in the stacks!" Shaking off the weariness, he made his way toward the reading area when Téa appeared looking alarmed. She skidded to a halt when she saw him, and Rebecca slammed into her. Yugi's eyes widened in surprise. "Rebecca! I didn't know you were back."

"Yugi!" Téa grabbed him by the shoulders. "It's Marik! He's the link. He was in London. Rebecca saw him bump into Mai before her first duel, the day her nightmares started."

"What?" He put his hand up to her chest and pushed back a step against the sudden onslaught of information. "Hold on, slow down. What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about Marik! We thought he was in Greece, but Rebecca saw him in _London_. With Mai. Right before her nightmares started."

Rebecca nodded in confirmation. "I saw the whole thing. This guy in a hooded cloak ran right into Mai just before her first duel. His hood slipped off, and I saw that it was Marik and thought it was weird that he was there, but then Grandpa told me what happened in the Valley of the Kings, and I figured that's why Marik was there."

"Marik's the link to everything that's been happening." Téa hissed out an angry breath. "Everything started when we saw him—Mai's nightmares, you feeling cut off from your other self, Joey getting sick. They're all the exact same things that happened to each of you in your Shadow Games with Marik. Mai lost her friends, Joey got hurt and passed out, and you—Yugi, I mean—disappeared. All this creepiness, all this darkness started when we saw Marik."

"Just like Egypt, remember?" Rebecca hugged herself. "Marik showed us the underground shrine where he grew up, and that's when everything started getting all creepy. You had a nightmare that night, a really bad one about the Orichalcos duel or something like that."

"A nightmare, Yugi, just like Mai," Téa said.

Yugi shook his head, still trying to absorb what they were saying. "Wait. I don't know what you're talking about. What nightmare?"

"You don't remember because that guide, the one Professor Julius fired, he gave you something weird to drink, and you went right back to sleep and didn't remember anything the next day. But before that, you kept screaming 'it's all my fault!' and _'aibou!'_ in your sleep. Because of Marik."

"And Yugi…." Téa gripped his shoulders. "We just had lunch with him, and everything's going to hell again. Joey's sick just like before, and he went to his room to take a _nap_—"

Like a slap to the face, those words served to clear his mind. Everything that didn't make sense quite yet was instantly filed away for later examination while one point stood out in sharp relief—Joey might be getting dragged into a Shadow Game. He pushed past Téa and Rebecca and ran for the door, the two girls following behind him as he raced for Joey's apartment.

The others were already there, grouped around Joey's bed, and clearly something was very wrong. Mai was shaking his shoulders. "Come on, hon, wake _up_!" Tristan was calling him names and making empty threats, Serenity was standing still and terrified in the corner by the window, her hands clasped tightly in front of her mouth, while Duke had his arm around her protectively. Yugi could see that Joey had put on his Duel Disk, just like Mai had when she was having her nightmare-turned-shadow-game. And like Mai after her nightmare had turned into a Shadow Game, he was limp and deathly still.

Yugi swallowed.

"Joey, kiddo, come on, please wake up." Mai was begging now, her voice cracking as panic began to creep in.

By contrast, Serenity's voice was an eerie monotone. "It's no good. The shadows are _everywhere_."

It was all the explanation Yugi needed. "Mai, I need your deck. Specifically the seven cards we added to it, plus one of your Harpies." Mai looked up, surprised to see him there, and when she didn't move immediately, he snapped at her. "Go!" She jerked away from Joey, then left to go retrieve her deck.

"Tristan and Duke, I need you to find Marik. Find him and keep him at your place, whatever it takes. He said he was going to tour around San Francisco on the BART, and then he'd head back to your place, Duke."

"We're on it," Duke said. Tristan gave Joey a reluctant look before getting up and following Duke toward the door.

Suddenly, Téa gripped Yugi's arm. "He has an errand. Something about Ishizu…."

Yugi blinked. "What?"

"Marik. He said he had an errand to run. That Ishizu… sent something here."

"When did he say that?"

"When that kid ran into me at the restaurant."

Her eyes looked strange, and Yugi couldn't remember Marik saying anything like that, but then she let go of his arm and it was gone, and he had more important things to worry about right now. He looked toward the door. "Tristan, you catch that?"

Tristan gave a brief nod over his shoulder as they walked out the door. "Errand, something to do with Ishizu, copy that."

Yugi moved in close to the bed to the spot Tristan had just vacated. Pulling up a nearby chair, he sat down and took the hand of his unconscious friend. Memories of Battle City flooded him, of Joey unconscious and near death, hooked to an endless array of medical machines. Yugi had slipped Joey's Duel Disk onto his arm then, urging him to keep fighting.

"Keep fighting," he said now.

Mai reappeared. "Got the cards." Breathless, she handed them off to Yugi. "The seven you gave me plus one of my Harpies." She backed away and joined Serenity at the window.

He quickly shuffled through them, pulling Red-Eyes Black Dragon out of the stack. "I'll hold this one for you, just like I did before," he told Joey as he slipped Red-Eyes into his own back pocket. He sorted the remaining cards, putting Dark Magician on top, then moved to place the cards into Joey's Duel Disk.

"Wait!" Téa grabbed his arm again. "You're not going into another Dark Game!"

He met her gaze. "I have to. I don't know what sort of vision Ramesses—or maybe it's Marik—is using to trick him, but it'll be something that will make him want to lose. I need to make sure he understands the truth, to make sure he fights to _win_."

"Yugi…." Her eyes were wide and afraid.

"He'll win." He put his hand on top of hers and squeezed it. "He'll win, and we'll both come back."

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. "You'd better."

Turning back to Joey, he closed his eyes and slipped the seven cards into Joey's Duel Disk, his hand remaining on Dark Magician as he uttered the same ancient Egyptian phrase he'd used to enter Mai's Shadow Game, and was swallowed by the darkness.

* * *

"Got any ideas where we should start?"

"I dunno." Tristan shrugged at Duke, thinking. They were in the parking garage, headed to where Duke's car was parked. They'd tried calling Ishizu on their way down to ask her what the rather cryptic statement might have meant, but had only gotten her voice mail, leaving them to try and puzzle it out for themselves.

"Downtown?" Duke reached his car and unlocked the driver's door, then slid in and leaned across the seat to unlock the passenger side for Tristan. "If this 'errand' has something to do with Ishizu, one of the museums would be a good bet."

"The thing is, I don't think any of the downtown museums have Egyptian exhibits. They're more about art and the history of San Francisco and stuff." Tristan scratched the back of his head. "Hey, what about that Egyptian museum Yugi dragged us to down in San Jose?"

"You think Marik would go there?" Duke raised a skeptical eyebrow. "San Jose isn't exactly on the BART."

"You don't think he knows how to call a cab?"

"But San Jose? That's a hell of a haul, and if we're wrong, we might miss him here."

"You got any better ideas?"

Duke looked at him thoughtfully, then smiled. "Actually, I do. Cady goes to San Francisco State, right? Well, they have a major Egyptian exhibit there. The Museum of Ancient Civilizations, I think it's called."

"And San Francisco State is on the BART." Now Tristan was smiling, too. "And if we're wrong, we can still get back to your apartment in plenty of time. It's worth a shot."

Duke put the car in reverse and began backing out. "SFSU it is."

* * *

Téa let out a strangled cry as Yugi collapsed beside Joey. Rebecca shrieked his name and threw herself at him, but Téa intercepted and Rebecca thudded heavily against her chest.

"What did he do? What happened?"

Téa wrapped her arms around her, clinging to her more to keep herself upright than to support Rebecca. She had no idea what Duke had told her about Mai's duel. "It's gonna be okay, Rebecca. He went into the game to help Joey. They're gonna kick Ramesses' butt, and everything will be fine, okay?"

Rebecca nodded, her face buried against Téa's chest. Across the bed from them, Serenity broke away from Mai and drifted to the side of the bed. She looked completely numb as she sat down beside Joey and took his hand in hers. She began whispering to her brother in Japanese. Mai kept her distance, but began pacing the room like a caged panther.

Over the top of Rebecca's head, Téa looked down to where Joey and Yugi were lying still as death on the bed. "You two better come back, or I'll kick both your asses. You hear me, Joey Wheeler?" Her gaze moved from Joey to Yugi, crumpled half in the chair and half on the bed. Something caught in her throat and she found herself unable to threaten him as she had Joey. Instead she squeezed Rebecca tighter and whispered into her hair. "You promised you'd come back. You promised."


	8. Pier Pressure

**8. Pier Pressure**

It was a weird sensation, like being a passenger in his own body, and Joey wondered briefly if this was what it was like to be Yugi, to have another entity living in your head, taking over and controlling what you do and say. Then he remembered that the other Yugi was their friend, not some foreign invader making him fight his best friend to the death.

He was standing on a dock at Domino Pier, his right leg chained to an anchor, and Yugi was on the other side of the dock, also chained to the same anchor. Joey felt laughter, dark and not quite sane, resonate through his skull and his voice, without any participation from him at all, was challenging Yugi. "I think it's finally time to begin this duel. Are you ready to duel, Yugi?"

"I am." Yugi—no, not Yugi, it was the other Yugi—nodded. "Let's do this."

Joey looked at the five cards in his hand. Change of Heart, Attrition, Rocket Warrior, Magic Arm Shield, and Alligator Sword. The other Yugi went first, playing Gazelle King of Mythical Beasts in defense mode and one facedown card before ending his turn.

From his strange locked-inside-his-own-head vantage point, Joey watched himself draw a sixth card. Raigeki. He called out to Yugi again against his will, using a style of speech distinctly unlike his own. "Say good-bye to your Gazelle, for I play Raigeki, which destroys it!" A lightning bolt shot out to Yugi's side of the field, destroying the shaggy brown beast as Yugi grunted and shielded his face from the blast. Joey went on to summon Alligator Sword, which appeared on the field and attacked Yugi's Life Points directly with 1500 attack points, bringing him from his original 4000 down to 2500. Yugi groaned in pain from the holographic attack while Joey was forced to listen to himself laugh over it. "Surrender yet, or do you want more? I hope you're not going easy on me because we're old friends. You'll be sorry!"

_What am I doing? Why am I dueling Yugi? Chained to an _anchor_. I can't win this duel—if I do, Yugi's_ dead!

Yugi glared at him coldly from across the dock. "We're not friends, Marik."

_Marik? Who the hell is Marik? Is that who's in my head?_

Yugi played Big Shield Gardna in defense mode, and Joey heard himself laugh again, a harsh, grating sound. "You think that's enough to protect your Life Points, Yugi? So naïve!" He drew a card—a Hinotama magic card, which would bypass any monsters on the field and attack an opponent's Life Points directly for 500 points of damage.

_Hinotama? I don't have that card. It's not even legal in Battle City!_

Then he heard the Voice, the one in his head, the one that was controlling him. _PLAY THE CARD AND CRUSH HIM!_

_No, he's my friend!_

_CRUSH HIM!_

Joey fought with everything he had. He couldn't play that card, dammit! He couldn't be a True Duelist if he played an illegal card. He couldn't let his friend lose a death match and get dragged into the ocean.

_PLAY THE CARD!_

_Go to hell!_ With a Herculean effort, Joey concentrated on his right hand, forcing it to slip the card into his hand and not into the Duel Disk. "I pass," he said slowly, fighting through the words as if he was trying to say them while swimming through a tub of miso paste.

_WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING? YOU ARE MY MIND SLAVE! I ORDERED YOU TO CRUSH HIM WITH HINOTAMA!_

_Mind slave _this_, you bastard_, Joey thought back with satisfaction. He was rewarded with a sudden piercing headache, but across the pier he could see Yugi give him a small smile and nod.

It was Yugi's turn again, and he drew, placing one trap or magic card facedown and summoning Kuriboh in attack mode before ending his turn.

_What the hell are you thinking, Yuge? You can't lose!_ Joey thought desperately while the Voice mocked Yugi for playing such a weak card as it forced Joey to draw. Another Hinotama. _Damn_.

Yugi was not intimidated. "I won't lose, understand? I'll defeat you, and free Joey from your control!"

The Voice laughed in Joey's head, forcing him to use Alligator Sword to attack Kuriboh, but Yugi was ready for him. He activated his facedown card, which turned out to be Spellbinding Circle. It ensnared Alligator Sword, not only stopping his attack, but bringing him down from 1500 to 800 attack points as well.

_PLAY HINOTAMA, _the Voice demanded. _PLAY BOTH OF THEM!_

Joey fought his own hand as it reached for the cards. _I'm a True Duelist, I won't play an illegal card, I won't beat my best friend in a death duel…_ Once again, he managed to get enough control to end his turn without playing either Hinotama, and was blasted with another splitting headache for his trouble.

There was more posturing as the Voice asserted control once more, then Joey watched from inside his own head as Yugi sort of blanked out the way Yugi did sometimes. He knew that meant he and the other Yugi were having a conversation with each other that no one else could hear. When it was over, there was a subtle shift in his posture, a softening in his eyes, and Joey could tell he was facing the real Yugi now, his real best friend. "Joey, _I'll_ be your opponent."

The Voice went ballistic. He wanted to defeat "the Pharaoh," not "the Container." He railed a bit in Joey's head before calming down and deciding that maybe this was better after all. If he could beat "the Container" almost to death, then surely "the Pharaoh" would come out to protect him…

_Like _hell_ you are,_ Joey thought savagely. _No one touches my friend! You got that? NO ONE._

Yugi, meanwhile, seemed to be waging his own internal battle. Whatever he'd just drawn, it was something important, and he seemed to be weighing what to do. Finally, he made his move and played… _Exchange_?

The Voice crowed in victory while inside his own head, Joey cringed. Without any impetus from him, his legs started moving and he walked around the pier, dragging the anchor chain behind him. "Show me your pitiful cards. Now which card shall I—"

_Red-Eyes!_ Joey recoiled with enough shock to silence the Voice. Red-Eyes was in Yugi's hand!

"My Red-Eyes!" That time he'd actually said it out loud. Him, his own thoughts coming out of his mouth under _his_ control.

_SILENCE, WHEELER! YOU'RE UNDER MY CONTROL NOW! YOU HAVE NO MIND OF YOUR OWN. I _OWN_ YOU!_

_Fuck you_, he thought back, but this time couldn't get his voice to cooperate. "Playing that Exchange card was a huge mistake, little Yugi," he said instead, and Joey decided he'd kick the Voice's ass for that one.

"Well, pick your card, Marik." Yugi turned his head and closed his eyes in that deferential way that was definitely the real Yugi and not his more brazen other self. Joey could almost hear the bow in his voice as he offered Joey his hand. "You can have any one you want, including the Red-Eyes Black Dragon."

But Red-Eyes was the card Yugi had won back for him after he'd lost it to one of the Rare Hunters. Yugi had tried giving it back to him before, and he'd refused until he could _earn_ the card back. He couldn't take it, not then, and not now.

The Voice—Marik, was that what Yugi called it?—disagreed. _DO AS I SAY AND TAKE THAT RED-EYES BLACK DRAGON FROM YUGI NOW. YOU HAVE NO MIND OF YOUR OWN, JOEY. SAY IT!_

_Go to hell!_ But he couldn't stop his hand from reaching out for the Red-Eyes. Yugi kept his eyes closed, his expression pained, and Joey fought with all his strength, his hand trembling on the card as he tried to keep from pulling the Red-Eyes out of Yugi's hand. _I can't take Red-Eyes. It's Yugi's card now. I made a promise!_

_NO YOU FOOL, TAKE THAT DRAGON! I COMMAND YOU!_

Joey grabbed his head with his left hand, his right hand still keeping its shaky grip on the Red-Eyes and this time the words made it to his lips. "No, I just can't! Not that card!" With all his strength, Joey unclenched his right hand, releasing the Red-Eyes. Before he could lose control of himself again, he grabbed the card next to it—Card Destruction. Wrenching it from Yugi's hand, he held it high over his head, savoring the victory over the Voice in his head.

Yugi cried out in triumph. "Ha! Yeah, Joey, you didn't take it!"

The Voice was drowning him out, screaming that Joey would pay for not taking Red-Eyes. But it didn't matter. Joey Wheeler had made good on his word not to accept Red-Eyes Black Dragon back into his deck until he'd earned it.

His control over his own body was short-lived, however. He heard Yugi say his name in concern, and it was the Voice who responded. "No. I told you, Joey has gone away. And I'm here to defeat you with my arsenal of rare magic cards, so I don't need your Red-Eyes!"

_Bullshit, you bastard._

Joey could tell Yugi wasn't buying it, either. With a wide smile on his face, Yugi said, "That's what you think. Now I get to pick one of your cards, _Joey_." He chose Magic Arm Shield, then Joey returned to his side of the pier, the anchor around his ankle clanging behind him.

It was still Yugi's turn, so he sacrificed Big Shield Gardna and Kuriboh to summon Red-Eyes Black Dragon to the field.

"It's my Red-Eyes!" Once again, seeing his most cherished monster gave Joey control of his body and mind for just a brief moment.

Yugi urged him to keep fighting, then ordered Red-Eyes to attack Joey's weakened Alligator Sword, taking 1600 of Joey's Life Points with it and knocking Joey to his knees. Yugi called out to him when the dust cleared. "Are you there, Joey? Is that you?"

But the Voice was back in control, shoving Joey roughly to the back seat. "Sorry, Yugi, your trick didn't work. I'm still in control. And now it's time. I'll wipe out what's left of your Life Points, my little friend, and take what belongs to _me_." He drew the third Hinotama card, and the Voice crowed inside his skull. _PERFECT! PLAY ALL THREE HINOTAMA CARDS AND HE'LL BE DOWN TO 1000 LIFE POINTS!_

Across the field, however, Yugi seemed to be waging another internal battle, and Joey watched in surprise as he took off his Millennium Puzzle. "I can't zero your Life Points, Joey." Clutching his Puzzle in his right hand, he began walking around the dock towards Joey. "So I hope you'll promise me one thing."

The Voice pulled Joey's attention away from Yugi to the cards in his hand, but he managed to pull out Rocket Warrior instead of any of the Hinotama cards. He summoned Rocket Warrior in attack mode, then played the continuous magic card Attrition. With Attrition, if he attacked with a monster whose attack points were lower than his opponent's monster, after battle damage was assessed, his opponent's monster would loose attack points equal to that of the monster that had just attacked it. Rocket Warrior was the perfect companion to Attrition—it only had 1500 attack points, but it could be set to Invincible Mode, meaning not only could it not be destroyed when attacking a stronger monster, it would also knock 500 attack points from the monster it was attacking for the remainder of the turn.

Yugi was still walking towards him. "Joey, wait. I want to give you something."

The Voice ignored Yugi and called the attack. Rocket Warrior blasted through one of Red-Eyes' wings, crippling it, then Attrition took another 1500 attack points, and Red-Eyes slumped to the dock on Yugi's side of the field with only 400 attack points.

The sight of his beloved Red-Eyes, crippled and near death, gripped Joey's heart, and he felt himself get some control back as Yugi came nearer, looking up at him with those damn wide _chibi_ eyes of his. "You're my best friend. And just like you gave me your Red-Eyes, I want to give you something that's meaningful to me."

"What's happening to me?" Joey sunk to his knees.

Yugi reached him and slipped the Millennium Puzzle around his neck. "Take this. It's my most precious possession, and now it belongs to you. Take care of it for me, Joey. It's yours now."

Joey stared down at his friend's Puzzle as Yugi returned to his own place on the field. The Voice cackled in his head, ordering him to throw the Puzzle into the ocean. Asserting control again, it forced Joey to pull the Puzzle off his neck and remove a piece of it. It was the center piece, the one with the Eye of Horus embossed on it.

"Don't do it!" Yugi begged.

_DO IT!_

"Please _stop_!"

_Please stop! My Grandpa gave me that Puzzle… _Joey saw himself in a classroom, playing Keep Away with Yugi's Puzzle box, tossing it back and forth over Yugi's head to Tristan. When Téa stepped in to defend Yugi, Joey palmed a piece, the big piece with the weird Eye on it, and tossed it out the window into a canal. Later, Yugi stood up for him and Tristan against the vicious Ushio, and Joey retrieved the Puzzle piece…

_THROW IT INTO THE OCEAN!_

"I can't…" Joey sunk to his knees. _I can't throw away his Puzzle, not again, I can't…_ Struggling to his feet once more, he snapped the Puzzle piece back into place and put it back around his neck. "Yugi's my friend."

The Voice railed at him, but in the end it couldn't make Joey throw away the Puzzle, nor could it make Joey play any of the Hinotama cards, so it conceded, allowing him to keep the Puzzle and end his turn. Once there was no struggle against his honor as a friend and a True Duelist, he had no purchase with which to keep The Voice at bay, so he lost control again and watched, locked inside his own mind once more, as Yugi drew. Red-Eyes regained the 500 attack points it lost from Rocket Warrior's attack and went up to 900. Yugi then played one facedown card and summoned Beta the Magnet Warrior in attack mode, but ended his turn without attacking even though Beta had 200 more attack points than Rocket Warrior.

Joey drew, and when he looked at his card, another shock went through him.

_Dark Magician? How the hell did I get Dark Magician in my deck?_

* * *

The intrusion was unwelcome, but this time Monarch was prepared for it. It certainly helped that the nature of this duel granted him significantly more control than the last time. Not only was he operating in the guise of Wheeler's opponent, he was also the Voice in Wheeler's head, the 'dark force' that Wheeler was fighting against.

Thus far, it had been a careful balancing act, controlling Wheeler just enough to match Shadow Game to his memories of the real thing from four years ago. But his control over Wheeler was limited and slipping fast, and in the end it needed to be Wheeler making the calls anyway, so his main task was to ensure that Wheeler perceived 'the Voice' as his true enemy before Monarch lost control completely.

Fortunately for him, he'd gone a long way to achieving that end when Wheeler drew Dark Magician. If the Voice was happy that Wheeler had drawn it, then Wheeler would fight against using it. And if he didn't, if he played the card, well, so much the better.

Those idiots. So predictable.

* * *

Joey could feel the Voice's pleasure when he drew Dark Magician. _IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW IT GOT INTO YOUR DECK. IT'S A POWERFUL CARD. SUMMON IT, AND WITH THAT AND THE THREE HINOTAMA MAGIC CARDS, YOU CAN DESTROY YUGI COMPLETELY!_

But something wasn't right. Dark Magician was Yugi's signature card. Yugi had his card, his Red-Eyes, because Yugi had won it back for him in his first Battle City duel. But when had he ever give Joey Dark Magician?

_He gave Mai a Dark Magician so she would remember…_

Mai? Why the hell was he thinking of Mai all the sudden? He'd heard she was here at Battle City, sure, but he hadn't even seen her yet. And Yugi had never given her a Dark Magician.

_PLAY THE CARD AND DESTROY YUGI!_

The Voice wanted him to obey, and Joey instinctively wanted to do the opposite of whatever the Voice told him to do. Except… it almost felt like suddenly there was a third voice in his head, one that was telling him nothing about this duel was right, that Yugi wasn't his opponent, that he really _did_ have to win, that he really _did_ have to play Dark Magician.

_No! That's just another trick! I won't fall for it!_ But he couldn't shake the idea that Yugi wanted him to play the card. No longer clear whether it was the Voice manipulating him or his own decision, he played Change of Heart and took control of Yugi's Beta the Magnet Warrior. He then sacrificed it along with Rocket Warrior and slipped the Dark Magician card into the now empty monster slot on his Duel Disk. On the field in front of him, Dark Magician materialized.

And then things got _really_ weird.


	9. Death Valley

**9. Death Valley**

This time when the darkness dissipated and the world came into existence around him, Yugi was prepared to be the Dark Magician, ready for battle on Joey's behalf. What he wasn't prepared for was Joey's opponent.

Himself.

Or more accurately, _Yugi_. Not Atem, the brash and cocky duelist, but _Yugi_. Everything about him screamed Yugi; his eyes were downcast and his shoulders were hunched in a posture Atem would never assume.

Something about seeing himself that way, as Yugi, as the part of himself that he felt so disconnected from the past week and a half, felt like cold water splashing in his face. "_Aibou_," he said, barely able to breathe. "Partner…"

Then he remembered where he was and what he was doing here. He was in Joey's Dark Game, a nightmare from the past. They were on a pier… Domino Pier… the duel where Marik had Joey mind-controlled! Yugi glared across the field at the vision of himself. "You're not me."

"That's right, I'm not." The Yugi across the field flashed him a wicked smile. "I'm just a shadow, because _you_ lost me to the Shadow Realm. Now it's _your_ turn. I activate Trap Hole!"

"No!" But it was too late. Trap Hole destroyed any monster over 1000 attack points as soon as it was summoned. Before Yugi even got a chance to turn around and talk to Joey, to tell him to he had to fight to win, the darkness claimed him again.

* * *

Deep inside his own mind, Joey tried to make sense of what was happening. If it wasn't weird enough for Dark Magician to be in his deck in the first place, as soon as it was summoned it started talking. Since when did Duel Monsters _talk_? And if a Duel Monster was gonna talk, the least it could do was make sense. But no, Dark Magician appeared on the field and said to Yugi, "You're not me." Well, _duh_.

"That's right, I'm not." It was a perfectly reasonable thing for Yugi to say, but then he added, "I'm just a shadow because _you_ lost me to the Shadow Realm. Now it's _your_ turn. I activate Trap Hole!"

What the _hell_?

But activating Trap Hole made sense, at least. It destroyed Dark Magician, leaving Joey with nothing but a now useless Attrition on his side of the field. With 2400 Life Points to Yugi's 2500, that was not good for him, even if Yugi's only monster was the ailing Red-Eyes. The part of him that was Joey rejoiced at this. _You go, Yuge! Kick the Voice's ass and win this duel!_

The Voice was not so pleased. _YOU MUST CRUSH HIM! I WANT WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY MINE, AND I WILL DESTROY BOTH OF YOU TO GET IT, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, MIND SLAVE?_

_I ain't your mind slave, you bastard_, Joey thought, and another headache attacked him. Yugi, meanwhile, took his turn, summoning Celtic Guardian to the field. The weakened Red-Eyes and Celtic Guardian both attacked Joey's Life Points directly, knocking him from 2400 Life Points all the way down to a bare 100. Internally, Joey rejoiced once more, and the Voice raged.

_OUR MOVE, MIND SLAVE. DRAW YOUR NEXT CARD AND DESTROY HIM!_

Joey drew, prepared to try and fight playing anything at all. Or hell, if he drew a monster weaker than 1300 attack points, he could just attack Celtic Guardian and be done with it. The anchor would drag him into the ocean, but Yugi would be free, and that's all that mattered. The Voice would give him a fight, but if he fought hard enough—

He couldn't complete that thought because when he looked at the card he drew, his mind froze. _What the _hell_ is going on here?_

He'd just drawn Cyber Harpie Lady.

* * *

When the darkness receded, Yugi found himself standing in a barren, rocky valley. He had no idea where he was or why he was there. He was wearing his school jacket over a black shirt and blue pants. Black boots were on his feet, and the familiar weight of the Millennium Puzzle banged against his chest. Ahead, he saw a circle etched in the dry ground, marked at intervals with rocks and markers that looked mystical in nature. A second circle was drawn inside the first, and in the center was a flat rock, almost like a tree stump. Yugi approached it cautiously, looking around him for some indication of life, but he was completely alone.

As he stood in the middle of the circle, lights began glowing around him. They circled and began to combine into a misty figure in blue and black, with spiky black, red-tipped hair—a mirror image of himself.

No, that wasn't quite right. As the spirit became more substantial, he realized it wasn't his mirror image at all. This face had wide eyes and an innocence he could never duplicate. This was Yugi, the light half of his soul, while he was merely the Nameless Pharaoh.

_"Aibou…"_

"The Other Me, is it really you?" the spirit asked, and the Nameless Pharaoh reached for him, his partner, his everything, only to have his hand pass right through. The spirit looked at him in confusion. "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to see my partner, no matter what. I'm so sorry, this is all my fault." He choked on the words, remembering. He'd played the Orichalcos card and he'd lost, and his partner had paid the price.

"I'm sorry, too."

He wanted to pull the spirit to him, to bring him back inside his body where he belonged. "I don't know what to do, _Aibou_. I don't know what's good or bad. When you're with me, I can feel your heart. I can feel your gentle spirit, your forgiveness. Right now, all I feel is emptiness. Even if I keep dueling, all I do is hurt people. It's just as Rafael said, there's a dark power in my heart. I… I'm even afraid of getting my memory back."

"What good is that now? I'm the one who's been locked away forever." The spirit's voice turned colder, and the Nameless Pharaoh shivered. It was unlike his partner to be so cold. That was _his_ department.

"I'm sorry—"

"The last thing I need is your pity!" The spirit turned abruptly and walked away to the far side of the circle, then spun to face him, activating a Duel Disk on his arm. "If your heart really is dark, then I will defeat you."

"_Aibou_, no, I can't duel you!"

"Why not? Are you afraid to face the consequences of your own actions? Are you afraid to have your soul locked away? Is this the great and mighty Pharaoh of Egypt, the very embodiment of a god here on earth, and yet he sends a boy as his substitute into the Realm where he's afraid to go?"

"Why are you acting like this?" He was baffled—he'd never seen his partner behave like this, so cold and angry.

"I'm just a reflection of you. We're exactly the same, so the darkness in your heart is also in mine."

_We're exactly the same…_

The Nameless Pharaoh frowned. No, they couldn't be exactly the same. They were _opposites_. He was dark; his partner was light. He was arrogant; his partner was deferential. He was cold; his partner was warm. He was vindictive; his partner was forgiving.

"You're arrogant," the spirit said as if reading his heart.

_He's my partner. Of course he can read my heart._

"All you care about is your own pride and winning. You don't see the pain around you. You don't _care_."

The accusation ripped at his soul. "I do care! I care about _you_! You mean everything to me!"

"Only because I am you!"

The Nameless Pharaoh shook his head, confused. "You say you're me, and you say we're the same, but you call me arrogant and accuse me of not caring. But you, _Aibou_, you care a great deal. You care about everyone around you. Your friends—_our_ friends. Strangers on the street. Even your enemies. Your heart is full of kindness. If we're the same, then I must have that, too."

The spirit glared at him. "You shut that part of yourself off when you sent me away. You could have been those things, but you wanted to be _strong_. You wanted to be _brave_. You wanted to be _confident_. You wanted to be a leader and a winner and all those things you think I can't be, so you shut me away."

"No…"

"Yes! And you want _her_, don't you? That's the real reason you sent me away."

"_Aibou_, no, I would never—"

"Don't lie! You can't lie to me. I can see into your heart, _my Pharaoh_." He was sneering, and it looked so damned _unnatural_ on his face. "She doesn't want someone like me, so you decided to get rid of me. You knew she'd love you more if you were all the things you are and none of the things I am. How could she love _me_? I'm pathetic and weak! She has no use for me, so neither do you!"

"STOP!" He squeezed his eyes shut as if that could shut out the onslaught of words. "You're wrong!" He grasped for some memory, any memory, desperate to find something that would prove the spirit wrong. Opening his eyes again, he faced his other self. "Our duel with Kaiba at Duelist Kingdom! She called for _you_ because she knew what I was doing was wrong. She wanted _you_ to save him, and you did!"

"She never really saw _me_," the spirit argued, and the Nameless Pharaoh could taste the bitterness like acid in his throat as the spirit ranted. "She never _noticed_ me, not until _you_ came along and then she was like a lovesick schoolgirl."

He frowned. Those words sounded so familiar. _My only defense is that I was fifteen and stupid and had stupid fifteen-year-old ideas about romance and what it meant to be a hero. _Téa had said that, he realized, but when? When would he have had such a conversation with her?

_But even so, I did make a choice. I made it in California when the Orichalcos took your soul, and I made it again when you first realized you had Atem's memories and we thought you were him._

He shook his head as if trying to wave off the fragments of memories that didn't fit. Why was he remembering her speaking of the Orichalcos like it had occurred in the past? And who was Atem?

More images came, fragments that felt like memories, but seemed like visions of the future. He saw himself in a dark cathedral-like room lit by torches.

_Is that Yugi?_ Téa's voice.

_No, it's the Pharaoh._ Tristan.

_I don't think so._ And then he turned to face her and she cried out _YUGI!_ and flung herself on him, clinging to his neck and sobbing into his shoulder. _We thought we'd never see you again!_

_Yugi_. She wanted to see _Yugi_, not the Pharaoh. And she would, when his soul came back after they defeated Dartz—

"I knew this day would come," the spirit said to him, and the Nameless Pharaoh looked up, disoriented. Was that the past or the future he'd just seen? He shook his head, trying to focus as the spirit challenged him. "Be a man and face me in a duel!"

"I…" The Nameless Pharaoh—_no, I have a name… what is my name?_—looked down at his empty left arm. "I can't. I don't have a Duel Disk or a deck."

"That's not my problem, is it?"

"How can I duel without a deck?" But why didn't he have a deck? He'd had one when he'd come here, hadn't he? He tried to remember. He'd been with Téa, and someone had guided them here, an old man named Ironheart. Only… that wasn't right, was it? Wasn't he just on the pier in Domino City dueling Joey? No wait, that was a year ago, or four years ago, or…

"It's time to duel!" The spirit brandished his Duel Disk in front of him.

Before the Nameless Pharaoh could offer another protest, the spirit drew six cards, placing one of them facedown in a monster slot.

"I can't," he repeated, gesturing to his empty arm, but the spirit merely smiled.

"Then this will be easy." The spirit smirked, flipping the monster to attack mode, and the Nameless Pharaoh saw that it was Gazelle King of Mythical Beasts. It attacked him directly, taking 1500 points out of his Life Points.

Although he did not have a Duel Disk counter to show the loss, he could feel it rip through him. _A Dark Game. This is a Dark Game._

The spirit laughed at him. "Your move!"


	10. Intersections

**10. Intersections**

This late on a Friday afternoon with a couple of weeks still left in winter break, the campus of San Francisco State University was pretty dead. The few administrative employees that worked during school breaks had mostly left for the weekend, and even the residence halls were closed until late in the month. Tristan couldn't imagine that the museum would be open—not that that would stop Marik if he really had come here. "So where's this museum anyway?" he asked Duke.

Duke was looking at a campus directory. "Uh… Humanities building, fifth floor. Hmm. It's only open to the public in November and April, though."

"Well, Marik's not exactly 'the public,' is he? Even if he were normal, his sister has more pull than almost anyone in the world when it comes to ancient Egyptian artifacts. And if he has gone evil, do you think he's gonna really care if it's open or not?"

"Good point."

They found the Humanities building and tried several doors. All were locked.

"So, did you learn how to pick locks in Military Police School?" Duke asked.

"Yeah, because I totally wanna be arrested for breaking and entering." Tristan rolled his eyes. "Let's give it up and go back to your place. He's gotta turn up there eventually."

"Wuss," Duke said under his breath.

"I heard that."

They started to head back toward the parking garage where Duke had left his car when something caught Tristan's eye. There was movement inside one of the doorways. Grabbing Duke by the arm, he jerked him around the corner of the Fine Arts Building across the sidewalk.

Duke cried out in protest. "What the—"

"Shh!"

They looked cautiously around the corner and watched as a door to the Humanities building opened and a man with platinum blond hair and a lot of jewelry emerged. Tristan grinned at Duke. "Bingo."

"So, now what? Do we follow him?"

"How we gonna do that without him seeing us?" Tristan asked. "It's not like there's a huge crowd to blend into. I just say we confront him directly."

Duke stepped back and bowed. "After you."

"Gee, thanks." Tristan strode out from behind the wall of the Fine Arts building. "Hey Marik!" He tried to sound casual, as if they'd just happened to have been on campus and run into him by accident. Late on a Friday afternoon during winter break. "What brings you here?"

Marik stopped, startled.

Duke was right behind Tristan. "Yeah, dude, if I'd have known you were coming here, I could've given you a lift. I got a girlfriend, lives over at the Towers residence hall just around the corner." He jerked his head in the general direction of Cady's dorm, and Tristan hoped Marik wouldn't know they were all closed for break.

"I…." Marik look flustered, which struck Tristan as very unusual whether he was evil or not. "There's an Egyptian exhibit here. Ishizu wanted me to see it while I was in San Francisco."

Tristan raised his eyebrow. "When the whole campus is shut down for winter break?"

Marik looked at them a moment and seemed like he was going to say something more. And then he bolted.

Tristan groaned. "Oh, that's just great!" He and Duke took off after Marik at a run. Marik had a good head start on them, but between Tristan's military training and long legs, he caught up with him pretty quickly. He tackled Marik on a patch of grass by the Student Health Center, then straddling him, grabbed him by the shoulders and flipped him over onto his back. "Dude, whatcha running for? We just wanna—"

He stopped short and Duke caught up to them, breathing heavily. "Jesus, Tristan, what did you do to the guy?"

"Nothing! I didn't even hit him, I just tackled him!"

"Then why's he unconscious?"

"I don't know!" Tristan shook Marik by the shoulders, then slapped his cheeks lightly. "It was almost like he was a puppet whose strings just got cut."

"Huh. Why do I get the feeling that's exactly what he is?" Duke shuddered. "Well, we'd better get him back to my place. Then we should call Serenity and have her check him out, see if he's just unconscious or if he's booked a time share in the Shadow Realm."

Tristan groaned again. "Fabulous. My favorite pastime, lugging around unconscious bodies."

Duke smirked at him. "Good. Then I'll leave it to you."

* * *

Joey stared at the Cyber Harpie Lady he'd just drawn. Now, Dark Magician was one thing—he supposed he could have mistakenly gotten some cards from Yugi's deck mixed in with his. They were best friends, after all. But the only person he'd ever known with Harpies was Mai Valentine, and she would kill him for having her card, so how the hell did it get in his deck?

_The same way all those Hinotamas got in your deck, moron_, he chided himself. The Voice.

And yet… the Voice was strangely silent. It wasn't urging him to destroy Yugi, or to play the Hinotama cards, or anything. Did that mean he was free? Could he just pass and let Yugi win so he would be dragged into the sea and not his friend?

_I can't zero your Life Points, Joey._

Joey looked down at the Millennium Puzzle around his neck. Yugi had given him the Millennium Puzzle because he didn't want it to go into the sea with him. Yugi, who would never allow him to be killed while he went free. _He won't beat me. We have to_ tie, Joey realized. But it was risky. If they ran out of time, they'd both be dragged under, and he wouldn't, _couldn't_ let that happen to his best friend. But neither would Yugi let it happen to him. He reached for the Cyber Harpie—

The Voice roared to life. _CRUSH HIM! PLAY HINOTAMA! _But Joey had enough control to summon the Cyber Harpie instead. She appeared on the field, stunning and deadly.

And she had Mai Valentine's face.

What the _hell_?

The Harpie with Mai's face winked at him, and a memory flooded his mind. He was on his knees at Duelist Kingdom unwrapping a handkerchief Mai had just given him. Inside was the Glory of the King's Hand card he needed to qualify for the semi-finals against Bandit Keith. _Does this mean we're friends?_

She'd thought he hadn't heard her answer, but he had. _Dork. Of course we're friends._

Then he was somewhere else entirely. A dueling field, and Mai was chained to some sort of stone. She was about to be attacked, and Joey jumped up to protect her, taking her face in his hands. _I won't let anything happen to you, because we're friends. I'll always be there for you, no matter what. I have something to tell you, Mai. Remember that dream I had, that I was back at school and I couldn't stand up, but all my friends helped me—including you? I know I told you you weren't there, but you were. You're my friend._

But he wouldn't always be there. A time would come that she would need him and he wouldn't be there.

_Don't even go there, Joey. Blaming you is how I got myself into such a mess the last time. This is _not_ your fault. And these past two days with you… It's been the best two days I've had in a long time._

Joey wondered if he was losing his mind, or if the Voice was somehow doing this, giving him memories that weren't real, since only the Duelist Kingdom thing had actually happened to him. But they _felt_ real. Mai felt real, and the depth of what he felt for her washed over him. He was in love with her, he realized with a shock. But that was crazy! She was completely out of his league, not to mention an adult while he was only sixteen, still in high school.

Wasn't he?

"Joey, you can do it! You can break free!"

Yugi's voice from across the field reminded Joey he was still in a duel. It must be a trick, the Voice was trying to trick him into attacking with Cyber Harpie. But he had to if Yugi really wanted to tie. He called the attack, and the Harpie-with-Mai's-face destroyed Yugi's Celtic Guardian, taking him down to 2100 Life Points. Still 2000 ahead of Joey, but there was no _way_ he was gonna play those Hinotama cards.

Yugi drew and when he looked at the card, he got an odd look on his face. With an almost predatory smile—_Yugi? Predatory?_—he set the card he'd just drawn in facedown defense mode and ended his turn.

Joey drew, this time getting Gift of the Mystical Elf. Another card he didn't have, but at least it wasn't one he _shouldn't_ have. It would give him three hundred Life Points for every monster on the field—a great card if he were actually trying to win. He started to set it facedown in the trap/spell slot, but as he looked at he had a sudden image of his sister, and then he got another one of those weird flashes and heard Yugi's voice.

_I think that Mystical Elf may be your special guardian monster. You may be bonded to her the way I am to Dark Magician or Joey to Red-Eyes or Mai to Harpie Lady or Kaiba to Blue-Eyes. The Gift of the Mystical Elf is healing. She restores Life Points. You're a healer, Serenity. That's why she's connected to you._

Joey put his hand to his head. _Stop messing with me, Marik or whatever your name is! Get out of my head!_

* * *

Mai felt like she was living a scene from a bad civil war movie where the menfolk went off to battle while the womenfolk sat around darning socks. The fact that Joey and Yugi were both unconscious on the bed in the middle of the room marred that image somewhat, but she knew they were, in point of fact, engaged in a battle, and she couldn't do a damn thing to help them except sit and stew. Or more accurately, pace and stew.

Téa, Serenity, and Rebecca all looked about as antsy as she felt, but Téa and Serenity were somehow managing to sit still. Téa had pulled up a second chair beside the one where Yugi was still half slumped. She would alternately hold his hand or rub his back, muttering words no one else could hear but Mai could only assume were Téa's trademark words of encouragement. Behind Téa, Rebecca fidgeted, sometimes pacing like Mai, other times just sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up while she fiddled with her glasses. On the other side of the bed sat Serenity, her hands clenched in her lap and her head bent in what looked like silent prayer.

Occasionally, Mai would get the strange sensation that she could almost feel Joey as he struggled. She could feel his confusion and it made her think of her own Shadow Game where she thought the Orichalcos was controlling her when really it had just been a false enemy so that she would let the real enemy win. She remembered how difficult it was to let go of that, to believe that the enemy in her head wasn't real, and it made her crazy imagining Joey facing the same thing. _The darkness isn't inside you, Joey, not this time. Trust yourself and fight to _win.

Serenity gasped. _"Onii-chan."_ She looked at the other three women. "Did you feel that?"

Mai frowned. "Wanna narrow that down a bit, hon? I've been feeling weird stuff since we got here."

Serenity's brows knit together as she closed her eyes and concentrated. "It's like… he's reaching out to me. But he's confused."

"I'm guessing he's been drawing our cards," Mai said. "I thought I felt something a little bit ago. Hopefully, Yugi's been giving him an earful."

Téa frowned, shaking her head slightly. "I don't know. Yugi's struggling, too. Can't you feel it?"

Mai's right hand, the one Téa had drawn that ridiculous happy face across seven months ago to symbolize their bond to each other, automatically went over her heart as she tried to feel what Yugi and Joey were feeling. They were just twinges, ghost feelings that came to her the way scents would waft in on a summer breeze. There was confusion, then clarity, then frustration, then anger. She looked at Téa. "I do feel it."

Téa leaned forward to where Yugi was sprawled half on the chair and half on Joey. She gently brushed at the blond hair around his forehead. "We're here for you, all your friends, Yugi. Just like we've always been. We're here for you."

* * *

The Nameless Pharaoh could feel his anger rising. It was one thing for his partner to expect to duel for revenge; it was quite another to duel him unarmed. "What are you doing? I _can't_ move. I don't have a deck!"

The spirit didn't care. "If you pass, then I play Polymerization and Berfomet. I'll fuse Berfomet with Gazelle to form Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast and attack your Life Points directly!"

Chimera attacked, its 2100 attack points bringing him down to a mere 400. The spirit sneered at him, and the Nameless Pharaoh wondered if he shouldn't just give up. Isn't this what he deserved? What if the spirit was right? What if he had sent him away just because he didn't want his "weakness?" Then he deserved what he got. He wasn't Yugi, and he deserved to go.

_Don't go!_ That was Tristan's voice calling out to him, another memory. But of what?

Then Joey's voice followed, full of desperation. _Yugi! It doesn't matter if you're Pharaoh or Atem, you'll always be Yugi! Even in a thousand years, you'll always be our friend!_

_Joey_, he thought. _My friends…._ He could almost feel them reaching out to him.

"Are you passing again?" the spirit asked.

And then he remembered. He did have a card. He didn't know how or why, but he knew that he had one card. It was a high-powered monster, and he should have to sacrifice two monsters to summon it, but instinctively he knew it wasn't necessary, not in this struggle against himself. He didn't need to sacrifice; he didn't even need his Duel Disk. All he needed was this card, the card once given to him by his friend.

"No, I am not passing." Retrieving the card from his pocket, he raised it high in the air with a flourish. "I summon Red-Eyes Black Dragon!"

* * *

The Voice was in control again. "All right, little Yugi, time to wipe out your Red-Eyes and your Life Points," it forced Joey to say. It wanted him to attack it with Cyber Harpie and then use the three Hinotama cards to finish him off.

But Joey could feel its control slipping. If he attacked Red-Eyes and only used two of the Hinotama cards, then Yugi would have 200 Life Points left and they'd be closer to tying. He looked across the field at the ailing Red-Eyes languishing beside Yugi.

_I can't do it. I can't destroy Red-Eyes. _He'd given it to Yugi for a reason. He could forfeit instead, let Yugi win—

And then something happened to Red-Eyes. Something in the dragon's eyes flickered, and Joey felt himself being pulled into them, into the deep red eyes of his most treasured dragon. It showed him a vision, but not like the weird half-memory visions the Voice was planting in his head. This was a vision of someplace he'd never seen before, but he knew what it was as soon as he saw it. It was a desolate canyon—Death Valley, he knew, although he didn't know _how_ he knew—and Yugi and the Pharaoh were facing each other in a duel.

* * *

The huge black dragon appeared in front of the Nameless Pharaoh, not in the pixilated way the Duel Disk holograms were summoned, but in a burst of smoke and shadows. He could feel it beside him, living and breathing, his best friend's precious dragon.

And atop Red-Eyes, looking down at him with a confused expression on his face, perched Joey himself.


	11. The Other Yugi

**11. The Other Yugi**

A shrill ring punctuated the air, and Mai jumped.

"Telephone," Rebecca said, rather unnecessarily. She got up and picked up the receiver. "Hello? … No, he's the same. Yugi's… with him, I guess." Her voice hitched a little. "But here, let me put you on speaker." She looked up at the others. "It's Tristan."

"Did you find Marik?" Mai asked when Rebecca pushed the button for the speakerphone.

"Yeah, we got him. He was at SFSU. They have a major Egyptian exhibit at their Museum of Ancient Civilizations. He was coming out of the building the museum's in, even though it was closed and locked. No idea if he was an invited guest or if he'd gotten in some other way. Or, for that matter, if he actually got into the museum itself at all."

"What did he want from the exhibit?" Rebecca asked.

"Don't know. Didn't get a chance to ask him, 'cause he bolted, and when I caught him, he just went limp. I didn't even hit him or anything, just tackled him, and now he's unconscious."

Mai frowned. "That can't be good."

"No. We brought him back to Duke's apartment, but we think Serenity should come over here and check him out to see if it's a Shadow Realm thing like Rex and Weevil or Pegasus on the island."

"I'm not leaving Joey," Serenity said firmly.

Mai looked at her friend. "I think you should go, kiddo. Joey's gotta fight this one on his own, and checking out the Queen of the Nile would give you something to do other than sit and worry."

"Are you sure it's a good idea?" Téa asked. "He's already managed to drag you, Joey, and Yugi into Shadow Games. I think we should all stay the hell away from him."

"Are you kidding? Tristan and Duke are both there, and those boys tie for a close second to Joey's rabid over-protectiveness when it comes to Serenity. Do you think they'll let him get within a hundred yards of her?"

"No _way_ he's touching you, Serenity," Tristan promised. "But I think you should come, 'cause if it isn't the Shadow Realm and he's just unconscious, then we should probably take him to the emergency room, and you're the only one who can tell the difference for sure."

Serenity looked from Joey to the phone back to Joey again.

Mai went to the side of the bed and put her hand on Serenity's shoulder. "He'll be fine, hon, and you'll be able to do something useful. Isn't that better than sitting here waiting? We'll call as soon as Joey and Yugi wake up."

She hedged a moment more, then nodded. "As soon as he wakes up."

"I promise."

Serenity sighed. "Okay, Tristan, I'm on my way."

* * *

When Red-Eyes Black Dragon appeared, the spirit—his _aibou_—went ballistic. "How _dare_ you call _my_ friend's monster! You've stolen _everything_ from me—my soul, the girl I love—and now you think you can steal my _friends_?" 

"What? _Aibou_, no, I—" But he stopped as he looked up at the image of his friend sitting atop Red-Eyes, remembering Joey's words again. _It doesn't matter if you're Pharaoh or Atem, you'll always be Yugi. Even in a thousand years, you'll always be our friend._

* * *

Joey stared in disbelief as Yugi shouted at the Pharaoh, and he knew immediately that it wasn't really Yugi, that the real Yugi would never talk to his other self that way, would never look so angry and _hateful_. The other Yugi, however, the one beside him who had played his Red-Eyes…. He looked up at Joey, and another quasi-memory tumbled through Joey's brain. 

He was in some sort of underground shrine. There was a bright light, and Yugi was about to walk into it. No, that wasn't exactly right. Not Yugi, but the other Yugi, and Joey was crying out to him. _It doesn't matter if you're Pharaoh or Atem—you'll always be Yugi. Even in a thousand years, you'll always be our friend!_

Their friend. His friend. Yugi, the other Yugi… this was _real_, he understood, a real memory, from the moment the Pharaoh left them for good. _And how can I remember if I wasn't there?_ he wondered, and he knew he had been there, that everything he'd been remembering was real. This Yugi, dueling himself in the desert, was his real friend.

* * *

"Joey… he's my friend," the Nameless Pharaoh said under his breath. "He's my friend…."

_Leave them alone! They're my friends!_ He could see himself jumping in front of Joey and Tristan to protect them from Ushio, could feel Ushio's fury redirected to him, the fists pounding on him, the well-placed kick in his stomach. He knew it wasn't really true, that these two weren't really his friends and that it was more than a little pathetic that he was so desperate for friends he'd call them that, but anything was better than letting Ushio hurt them and say _he'd_ put him up to it. He could feel the terror when Ushio had threatened him, telling him he had to pay two hundred thousand yen or else. He could feel the elation when later that night he'd finished the Millennium Puzzle, all but one piece, and then the frustration when he couldn't find that last piece. He could feel his gratitude when Grandpa produced the missing piece, and his confusion when he told him how another student had brought it to him, and he'd been dripping wet even though it wasn't raining.

_I have a treasure, too,_ Joey had said the next day. _Something that's seen but can't be seen. Our friendship!_

The Nameless Pharaoh blinked. That was how he and Joey had become friends. He remembered! Not like he remembered a story he'd heard a thousand times—he actually _remembered_. He remembered how it had felt to be that desperate for friends, and how Ushio's fists had felt pummeling him. He remembered _Yugi's_ memory.

_And how can I remember if I wasn't there?_

"Joey is not your friend!" The spirit was seething. "He's _my_ friend. They're all my friends and you will not steal them from me!"

"No, they're _our_ friends." He thought of Téa. They'd been much younger, in grade school. She was one of the few people who would talk to him. He was so elated the first time she talked to him, that _anyone_ would talk to him, he had given her one of his games, a Gameboy he'd had in his backpack. She'd gotten frustrated with it because she couldn't learn it quickly enough to suit her, and she broke it. When she brought it to him, sheepish, he was so thrilled that she cared enough to apologize that he'd laughed and given her another one. They'd been friends ever since. Well, not all the time. As often as not, she would pretend not to notice him in order to avoid incurring the disapproval of her more popular friends. But other times, she would talk to him and she would stick up for him. And she was his friend _now_, and he could feel her presence like something palpable he could hold in his hand. _My friends. I remember._

"How can I remember if I wasn't there?" he said out loud.

The spirit's face was contorted in rage. "You have no memories! You are a nameless pharaoh!"

How could he have ever mistaken that _thing_ for his partner—no, _himself_? "I have a name! My name is _Yugi_. I know who I am. I remember. And how can I remember if I wasn't there? I can't. I remember because I _was_ there. I'm _Yugi_."

Yugi looked up at Red-Eyes and Joey. "Red-Eyes Black Dragon, attack Chimera with inferno fire blast!"

Red-Eyes reared up and blasted Chimera with a red ball of fire, knocking the spirit's Life Points down by 300. "I know who I am," Yugi said, gritting his teeth. "I know who my friends are. You can't take that away from me, do you understand? No one can take that away from me. I'm not the Pharaoh; I'm _Yugi_."

The spirit, looking more like a demon than either version of himself, glared at him, then gave him a malicious smile. "So you are."

* * *

The Death Valley vision was gone, and Joey was back on Domino Pier, the Voice chanting in his head: _DESTROY! DESTROY! DESTROY!_ But he understood now. This was a Shadow Game, and he knew who his enemy was. The Voice wasn't his enemy, _Yugi_ was. No, that wasn't right, not Yugi. That bastard across from him was no more Yugi than the one who had shouted such horrible things to the _real_ Yugi in Death Valley. They were illusions, designed to make him lose, like the nightmare Shadow Game Mai had played that wanted her to believe she was playing him.

Joey smiled, the Voice completely incapable of controlling him any longer. "All right, _little Yugi_, time to wipe out your Red-Eyes and your Life Points," he repeated. "And this time, it's really me saying that. I know who you are, _Ramesses_."

"Yugi" tried to protest, but Joey called on Cyber Harpie to destroy Red-Eyes. It wasn't any more real than Yugi was—the real Red-Eyes was with the real Yugi in Death Valley. The fake Red-Eyes wailed and disintegrated, and the Harpie-with-Mai's-face grinned at him in triumph. _I love you, Mai_, he thought, and then reached for one of the Hinotama cards. He could end this now if he played all three of them. "Yugi" was down to 1200 Life Points and each Hinotama would take out 500. The duelist in him hated the thought of playing an illegal card, but he knew now he had to win to beat the Dark Game. But as he reached for it, something held him back.

_The real Yugi's in Death Valley._

How the hell did Yugi get in Death Valley? That had happened three and a half years ago. Unless… was Yugi in his own Dark Game? How did he get there?

_The Dark Magician!_ Joey remembered with a start how Yugi had entered Mai's Shadow Game via the Dark Magician. He must've done the same thing for Joey, which would explain the odd little exchange between Dark Magician and Not-Yugi across the field. Only… Dark Magician was in the graveyard, and if the Shadow Game ended with Yugi in the graveyard…

_Shit, _he cursed inwardly._ I can't win now. I have to get Yugi back first!_

Joey looked at his hand, trying to decide how best to stall until he could get something that would bring Dark Magician back from the graveyard. He had the three Hinotama cards, plus the Card Destruction he'd taken from Yugi—no, not Yugi, _Ramesses_—when he'd played Exchange. If he played that, he would have to discard his hand and draw the same number of cards. He kinda hated to do that because those Hinotamas would be useful once he managed to get Yugi back from the graveyard, but if he got rid of them and drew three more cards, he'd be that much closer to drawing something to bring Yugi back. He had the Mai-Harpie on the field, the Attrition magic card was still there, and Gift of the Mystical Elf facedown.

_Wait a second. Dark Magician, Harpie Lady, Gift of the Mystical Elf… I know what cards will be next!_ Smiling again, he pulled Card Destruction out of his hand and slid it face up into a trap/spell card slot. "And now I play Card Destruction. Both of us must discard our entire hands and draw the same number of cards."

The fake Yugi had only one card, and he discarded it and drew another. Joey put his three Hinotama cards into the graveyard and drew three cards: Command Knight, Dark Magician Girl, and Orgoth the Relentless. _Tristan, Téa, and Duke,_ he thought. _Talk about your Heart of the Cards…._

His battle phase was over, so he couldn't attack any more this turn, but he hadn't played a monster yet, so he summoned Command Knight. A knight with Tristan's face materialized beside Cyber Harpie. "Yo, bro," Joey grinned at the knight.

The knight didn't answer, but it smiled back at him.

* * *

The world went into a sudden, dizzying spin around Yugi, wrenching him off his feet in a nausea-inducing revolution. When it stopped, he fell to his knees, clutching at the ground to stabilize himself, taking in a huge gulp of air to keep his stomach from rebelling. When he was finally able to rise, he realized he was on the opposite side of the field from where he'd started, and across the way he could see Red-Eyes Black Dragon, and behind Red-Eyes—

"The Other Me!"

The Pharaoh looked up, his eyes heavy with sadness. "I understand, _Aibou_. You are you. It's all you ever needed to be. It's all you ever should have been. I understand why you want me to go."

"What? Other Me, no, I—"

"You said it yourself, all the terrible things I've done. 'Because the _Pharaoh_ is a god, you see. He's not beholden to right and wrong like the rest of the mere mortals. No, he _defines_ it. He is judge, jury, and… _retribution_.'"

He felt sick remembering saying those words to Téa. "No, I didn't mean… I thought—"

"'What if Joey had never taken that Puzzle piece? What if Yugi had put the Puzzle together _before_ Ushio? What do you think would've happened if the _almighty Pharaoh_ had decided it was _Joey_ who was the bully? That it was _Joey_ who needed to get his comeuppance in a Dark Game?' Your words. _Yugi's_ words. And you're right. I don't belong in this world. I understand why you want me gone. It will be as you wish."

"No!" Yugi fumbled for words. "I don't… please—"

But the world was spinning again, and this time when it stopped, he was no longer in Death Valley. He was in a dark underground shrine. A light flared, blinding him, and a strong blast of wind stung his face. He shielded his eyes with his arm, and when the light dimmed slightly—or his eyes adjusted, he wasn't sure which—he could see that he was standing before the Millennium Stone. He could feel the light searching his soul, and then it reached into him, separating out the Pharaoh's soul from his own. It was the Ceremonial Battle, he realized, and the Pharaoh—no, _Atem_—was separating from him so they could duel.

But the light did not divide the souls cleanly. As if they had bonded together on a molecular level—skin to skin, cell to cell, soul to soul—the light tore Atem from him. The pain was so intense, a white hot fire over every inch of his body, he could barely stand, barely breathe. He wanted to scream in agony, but he couldn't even do that. All he could do was stand and let the light rip his other self from every corner of him.

When they were separated and Atem stood beside him, Yugi collapsed to the stone floor, gasping for breath. Atem, however, didn't seem to notice. He turned his back and walked away to the other side of the shrine where he would take his place to duel him. _I understand why you want me gone…_

_No_, he tried to call out, but he couldn't catch his breath, and oh, God, it hurt so much, but his other self kept walking away, and he had to stop him, he had to get him back, he had to _breathe_.

And then the air came and, without thinking, he cried out with everything he had: _"ATEM!"_


	12. Atem

**12. Atem**

The sun had set a little while ago, and someone—Rebecca, maybe—had turned on a light, but the room still felt impossibly dark to Téa—dark from gathering shadows that had nothing to do with the twilight outside the window. She was leaning forward in the chair she'd pulled up to Joey's bedside, her face pressed against her hands, trying to sense Yugi and Joey, trying to find a way to go to them the way they had gone to Yugi in Duelist Kingdom, when she felt a sudden flash of pain twist in her heart. She gasped, her hands flying to her breast.

"You feel that too?" Mai was sitting on the other side of the bed from Téa, having stopped her pacing and taken up Serenity's vigil at Joey's side after she'd left.

"_I_ sure did," Rebecca answered before Téa could say anything. "Just like in London. Something's wrong, Yugi's hurt!"

Mai tried to comfort her. "He probably just took some battle damage."

Rebecca wouldn't be placated. "He's not supposed to be the duelist; he's _Dark Magician_. What if he was sent to the graveyard? What happens then?"

Mai looked down at Joey and brushed his hair from his eyes. "Joey's one of the best duelists in the world. He'll find a way to keep Yugi on the field."

The evasive answer did nothing to ease Rebecca's fears, but Téa shut the two women out and focused on Yugi. The pain she sensed from him didn't feel like battle damage. It felt deeper, somehow. More… personal.

She reached over to touch his shoulder. "Yugi."

* * *

"Yugi." Joey gasped for air, clutching his chest. _Yugi's hurt! He's in the graveyard and he's hurt…_

"That's right, Joey, it's me," his opponent called out from across the field.

"Not you!" Joey sneered at him. "I know who you are, you bastard, and you sure as hell ain't my pal." _He's hurt, I've gotta get him back from the graveyard, I can't let this duel end until he's back safe from the graveyard._

He'd just been in the middle of his turn when he'd felt Yugi's sudden and intense pain in his own heart. It was like London or even Duelist Kingdom all over again, but this time he was dueling and he had to concentrate on that, to get Yugi back. His last turn had brought him and the fake Yugi almost to a dead heat. The fake had two facedown monsters and one facedown trap or magic card while Joey had Cyber Harpie Lady and Command Knight in attack mode, the Attrition magic card face up, and Gift of the Mystical Elf face down.

Joey had drawn and summoned Fire Princess, the last of his friends' special cards, and a perfect compliment to the Gift of the Mystical Elf trap card. He'd activated the latter, and the blue-skinned elf appeared, only with his sister's face and red hair. "She gives me 300 Life Points for every monster on the field, including your facedown monsters, so by my count that's 1500 brand spankin' new Life Points for me. And whenever I add Life Points, Fire Princess's special effect is activated, taking a 500-point chunk out of your Life Points. So now I've got 1600 and you've got 700, _Yugi_."

"Yugi" continued the charade of trying to get him out of "Marik's" control, but the act wasn't working anymore, and Joey ignored it, sending his Cyber Harpie in to attack the monster the fake Yugi had set the last turn. Unfortunately, it was Giant Soldier of Stone, which had 2000 defense points to Cyber Harpie's 1800 attack points. Joey's Life Points took a 200-point hit, but because Giant Soldier of Stone was in defense mode, Cyber Harpie was not destroyed. He'd then sent Fire Princess to attack the other monster, still facedown, but "Yugi" had activated Magic Arm Shield, the card he'd taken from Joey when he'd played Exchange. Magic Arm Shield had redirected Fire Princess's attack to one of Joey's own monsters, Cyber Harpie, and Fire Princess was destroyed, taking 500 of Joey's Life Points with her. That left him with 900 to Yugi's 700.

On "Yugi's" next turn, he'd set the card he'd just drawn facedown in the trap or magic slot before ending his turn, and Joey had drawn and played Little Winguard. A warrior monster, Little Winguard got a 400-point boost from Command Knight's presence on his side of the field, giving it 1800 points. Neither were powerful enough to take Giant Soldier of Stone, but he'd been debating making another try for "Yugi's" facedown monster when he'd felt the ache in his heart and knew Yugi—the real Yugi—was in a whole lot of pain.

_Yugi_, he thought, his mind searching frantically for a way to help his friend and bring him back so they could win this freaking duel and go _home_. But nothing in his hand would help, and if he attacked, who knew what effect he might activate. If either one of them lost all their Life Points while Yugi was still in the graveyard…

"It's still your move," the fake reminded him, and Joey gritted his teeth.

"I end my turn."

As the fake Yugi drew, Joey concentrated on the real Yugi. _Hang on, pal. Hang on._

* * *

_"ATEM!"_ Yugi screamed with all his strength. The pain from his other self being forcibly ripped out of his body was nearly overwhelming, but worse than that was the pain of him walking away thinking Yugi wanted him gone, that he'd meant those horrible things he'd said when he'd thought he was the wrong him. He couldn't think, he couldn't put words to the desperation he felt, but it poured out of him of its own accord. "ATEM! _Iw sedjem eny. Iw iash i! Iw ii eny!"_

Across the dimly-lit stone chamber, his other self stopped suddenly and turned to face him, a sweeping motion that caused his blue school uniform jacket to flare out behind him like a cape. Only… now it _was_ a cape. As he turned, his features and clothes all changed, dissolving from a slightly taller and more imposing but otherwise identical version of Yugi into something radically different—a copper-skinned man in the royal raiment of an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. No longer the other Yugi, he was Atem.

_"Aibou?"_

It was only when Yugi heard the Japanese endearment that he realized he hadn't called out to him in Japanese, nor in English. He'd spoken ancient Egyptian. _Iw sedjem eny. Iw iash i! Iw ii eny!_ It was a summoning incantation, but in his mindless desperation he had used it to call out to his other self, pleading for Atem to come to him.

_"Aibou?"_ Atem's eyes were wide with alarm.

Yugi was sobbing, and he called out again, this time in English. "Don't go, Other Me, please don't go, I beg you!"

In just a few quick long strides, Atem crossed the chamber and sank to his knees before Yugi. "I'm here, Partner," he said quietly. "I'm not going anywhere."

Yugi looked up, his eyes meeting Atem's, so like his own and yet so different, and he realized it was the absolute truth. He _wasn't_ going anywhere. Nothing—not life, not death, not even the spirit world could take Atem away from him. So long as he lived, Atem would live as well.

Atem reached out to help him up, but Yugi held him off with a shake of his head, still breathing hard. Slowly, shakily, he got to his feet on his own and stood for a moment bent over, his hands gripping his knees for support as he tried to catch his breath.

Atem rose along with him. "_Aibou_, are you all right?" His voice was thick with concern.

Yugi nodded and held up his hand, signaling for Atem to wait. When he finally felt steady, he stood up straight and faced him, meeting his gaze once more. It was almost overwhelming, to be standing face to face with his other self once more after three years apart. He understood that it was just a vision, another illusion Ramesses had somehow created from his memories to deceive him, but it no longer mattered. He knew how to win this Dark Game, and it had nothing to do with monsters, traps, or spells. Here, in this re-creation of the Ceremonial Battle, there was only the two of them, Yugi and Atem. No audience, no cheering section, no intrusion of any kind. Even knowing it was an illusion couldn't change the rightness of this moment, of the chance he was being given to win not just this Dark Game, but the Ceremonial Battle itself once and for all. And to never fight it again.

"I'm okay," he said at last, and Atem nodded, his look of concern lightening slightly. Yugi took in another shaky breath. "But there's something I need to tell you before we duel."

"Of course, Partner."

"I'm going to win." It wasn't a challenge or as a boast, but a statement of mere fact.

Atem smirked at him, and Yugi could tell he approved of his confidence, but for Yugi it was more than just confidence, it was finally _knowing_ what he had to do. "We're going to duel, and I'm going to win, and you're going to leave. And then I won't fight this fight anymore."

"I know."

"No, you _don't_ know. Because I've been fighting this same duel every day for three years. Fighting you. Fighting _me_. I want to win; I don't want to win. I want to be on my own; I don't want you to leave me. Every day, I fight this battle, every day for three years, but right here, right now, is the last time. And when it's over, you're going to tell me there is no longer 'another me,' that there is only one Yugi Mutou in the world. It sounds so lonely at first, so unbearable to even think about you not being here, but I understand what that means now. There _is_ only one Yugi Mutou, but not because you're gone and I remain. It's the two of us _together_ that make that one. That's how it always was, even before I ever solved the Puzzle and you came to me, and it's how it always will be even after you're gone. You will always be with me as long as I have your memories."

Atem watched him, never taking his eyes from his. "Of course you will remember me, as I will remember you. We will always have that, Partner."

Yugi shook his head. "No, you don't understand. Not just memories _of_ you, Other Me. Memories _from_ you. _Your_ memories. I carry them now. And how can I remember if I wasn't there? I can't. So if I remember your memories, then I must've been there all along, always with you even when we thought we were apart, because we can _never_ really be apart. I didn't get that before. Téa did, though. She understood all along, and now I do, too."

Atem nodded, then gave him an encouraging smile. "She loves you very much," he said after a moment.

"I know." And he did, he really _knew_. "And… she loves you, too. I get that now, too. She has to. She can't really love me unless she loves you because we're the _same_."

Atem didn't answer, but his eyes looked more guarded, almost troubled, and Yugi knew he was wrestling with his own feelings about that, just as Yugi had been. Yugi nodded at him, understanding. "I've really been struggling with that. Struggling with _you_ because I thought you were a threat. Everything I feel for her is mixed up with everything I feel for you. I never thought I could live up to you, and I put that on her. If I can't be good enough for me, how can I be good enough for her? I figured it had to be you. I just got her by default because you were gone and I was the next best thing."

_"Aibou—"_

"No, it's okay now. I get it now; that's not how it is. But there's more. There's you and what _you_ mean to me. I can't—" He fumbled for words big enough to explain what he felt. "I can't possibly love anyone like I love you, and I've been trying for six years to make sense of that, to try and put words around it and make it fit some standard definition of love, but it's so _big_ I just can't. You are the _other me_. Half of who I am. And I could never figure out how to make loving you fit with loving her, because you're so much more than just a friend or a brother or anything there are even words for."

He closed his eyes, his fists clenched tightly at his side. "So I kept fighting you, every day, because if I didn't, I thought maybe I'd have to choose between you and her, but if you were gone, I wouldn't have to choose. Except I couldn't bear the thought of you being gone, either. And then I'd think of her, and I'd want you here so I could be what I thought she wanted me to be, and I'd want you gone so I could have her to myself. I've been competing with you every day, because I thought I had to. But I don't. I don't have to compete with you, and I don't have to choose between you and her. Not ever."

Opening his eyes, he met his other self's gaze, almost overwhelmed by the emotion he saw there. Guarded, but there. Atem's eyes were deep and unfathomable, and yet, Yugi understood what was behind them. He took a breath to steady himself. "So understand when we duel now that I will win, but not because I have to best you and not because I want you to leave. You _have_ to leave, and at the same time, you never will. So this is the last time I will fight this duel. Forever."

Atem didn't speak for a moment after Yugi was done, and when he did, his voice was like waves on the beach, strong and steady, but with an undercurrent that indicated there was so much more power and depth than readily apparent. "Thank you, _Aibou_."

And then he reached up and put his hand on Yugi's shoulder, and at his touch, Yugi froze and he _knew_, and the knowing almost knocked the wind from him once more.

"You're… you're really you!"


	13. The Same

**13. The Same**

Atem smiled. "Yes, it's really me."

"You're not a vision? Something from my memories meant to trick me? You're really… but _how_?"

"You're my partner. We're both in the Shadow Realm, and you summoned me. How could I do anything but come to you when you called for me?"

Something in Atem's words broke through Yugi's paralysis, and every emotion he had spilled out of him like candy from a child's piñata. He flung himself at Atem, knocking him back a step or two, and wrapping his arms around his other self as tightly as he could hold him. For a moment, Atem was too stunned to respond, but then Yugi felt arms encircle him and hold him close.

"I can't believe it's really you!" Yugi buried his face in his other self's shoulder. "I missed you so much."

"I missed you, too." Atem's voice was strangled and raw. "I… I wanted to come to you sooner, as soon as I knew you were in a Dark Game, but I couldn't, not until you summoned me."

Yugi pulled back so he could see him, but without letting go. "Other Me, are you all right? You've been in the Shadow Realm for ten days now…."

"I'm fine," Atem said, his usual confidence back, and he did look fine.

But Yugi could see a tiredness behind his eyes, and he knew the shadows were taking their toll. It gave him a renewed sense of urgency. "I'm going to get you out of here, I promise." He blinked back tears.

_"Aibou_, my body—"

"I don't _care_," Yugi said hotly, his teeth clenched in determination. "I will find a way, I promise you."

"I believe you, _Aibou_." He smiled and reached up, cupping Yugi's cheek with his hand.

Yugi closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of his other self's hand on his skin. "Other Me, what about your memories… if I have your memories, what do you have? I haven't taken them from you, have I?"

"Of course not. How could I forget you or our friends? You said yourself that we are the same, and we are. I share the same memories you do."

Yugi sighed, satisfied. His other self moved his hand from Yugi's cheek back to his shoulder and Yugi leaned into him, resting his forehead against Atem's. They stayed like that a long time in silence, each craving contact with the other. As close as they had been for the three years they were together, there had only been rare instances when they could actually touch each other. In their soul rooms in the depths of the Millennium Puzzle, they could stand face-to-face and even clasp hands, but those times had been infrequent. In the Memory World, when the Pharaoh had nearly lost his life energy in a dark battle, Yugi and the others had found him, and Yugi had held onto his hand to restore his power. And then when they'd separated just before the Ceremonial Battle, when the duel was over, Atem had clasped his shoulder just like he'd done a moment ago. That had been their good-bye. Yugi hadn't embraced him then, and he'd always regretted that, letting his other self leave without even a hug good-bye. Now gratitude for this chance to correct that washed over him as he clung to Atem, reveling in the warmth of their physical contact. He wanted to remember this moment, to etch it into his mind, to hang onto it forever.

He knew it wasn't really real, the way the Memory World hadn't really been real. Atem's body was lying mutilated in Luxor, and Yugi's own was slumped in a chair at Joey's bedside in San Francisco. But like the _Sahu_, the spiritual body that accompanies the _Akh_ to the afterlife, the bodies they had here in the Shadow Realm were a different kind of real. They _felt_ real, down to the heartbeat Yugi could feel in his chest, and that was all that mattered. Strange, how they hadn't been able to just simply touch each other despite having shared a more intimate connection than anyone else could possibly understand, sharing a body and a heart and a mind for three years—"

Yugi's eyes flew open and he jerked his head back. _Sharing a body and a heart…_ "Other Me!"

Atem frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, everything's—" Yugi backed away a step, disentangling himself from Atem's embrace to give himself space to think. "Oh, my God, how can I be so stupid? It was right in front of me the whole time and I didn't even think of it…."

"Partner, what?"

"All this time we've been looking for some sort of ritual that would send you back to the afterlife despite not having a body anymore, but you _do _have a body—the one you used for three years after you were released from the Millennium Puzzle!"

Atem's eyes widened in surprise as he understood what Yugi was saying. "You can't be serious!"

"Of course I'm serious! It's so simple, why didn't I see it?"

"It's impossible!"

"Why?"

Atem put his hands on his hips and cocked his head at Yugi. "Well, for one thing, last time I checked, that body was still in use."

"So?"

"So I should think you wouldn't enjoy having your brains sucked out through your nose, your heart weighed, and your body embalmed and wrapped in cloth strips," he said dryly.

"Why would I have to? The embalming procedures aren't what actually send the soul to the afterlife, are they? The embalming preserves the body, but the rites… the whole purpose of the Opening of the Mouth is to reanimate the body to support the _Ka_. So what would happen if the body isn't inanimate to begin with? And it's already been home to your _Ka_, so the rites attending the embalming shouldn't even be necessary. We'd just have to attach the Name and the _Ka_ and _Ba_ and everything else to this body instead of the one that was destroyed. I mean, they used to do the Opening of the Mouth on _statues_, Other Me, so if a _Ka_ can find its home in a statue, why not another body that it's already lived in? And the weighing of the heart, that already happened. You've already passed that test."

"_Aibou_—"

"I'm not sure exactly which rites did what," Yugi went on, growing more excited by the moment, "but it's an easy answer to find. I don't even need Ishizu's texts; my own grad school textbooks—"

"_Aibou_—"

"—would have enough to tell me whether it's doable or not. Other Me, I think this can work. We have all the necessary elements, we just have to transfer the connection from the desecrated body to mine—"

"_Aibou_, stop." Atem gripped his shoulders once more, and Yugi finally stopped talking. Atem shook his head. "I can't allow you to do this. You sustained me for three years. You cannot sustain me in _eternity_."

"Why not? Other Me, I would do anything for you, you have to know that!"

"I know." Atem's voice was quiet and solemn. "I know you would, but I cannot ask this of you. The whole point of the Ceremonial Battle was for you to be whole without me, not to bind yourself to me for eternity."

"But I'm already bound to you for eternity. What do you think I was just talking about? I can't be complete without you—"

"No, _Aibou_. I can't allow you to substitute yourself for me, not again."

"I don't intend to, not like what you're thinking. This isn't the same thing as the Orichalcos. I—" Yugi looked at the floor a moment, cringing as he remembered the things he'd said to Téa about Atem. Hard things he didn't want to even consider, let alone own, but they were his as much as everything else that came from Atem was, and he knew there was some truth to them.

"I know now what it's like when I'm gone and there's only you. I don't want that any more than you do. I understand now what happens to you when I'm removed, but you have to understand what happens to _me_ when _you're_ removed, because it isn't any better. I need you as much as you need me, Other Me. If you disappear into the shadows, I won't be… I'll…" He trailed off, swallowing, then shook his head and looked up again, meeting Atem's gaze. "No. I won't let that happen. This isn't about our differences and it isn't about me putting myself down for you, not anymore. It's about how we're the _same_. Our bodies, our hearts…" He took Atem's hand and pressed it to his heart, then reached for Atem's heart with his other hand. They beat together in perfect unison. "See? Even our hearts are the same."

Atem blinked. "_Aibou_…"

"This will work. I know it will."

They stood silent at a moment, feeling each other's hearts beating. Then Atem closed his eyes and sighed. "What about Seto? My cousin has been sent here, too. I can't leave without him."

Yugi felt his high hopes crash down around him and he dropped Atem's hand, letting his own hands fall to his side. "Seto, I totally forgot." But then he gave Atem a thoughtful look. "Wait, maybe it can work for him, too. He and Kaiba—"

"Kaiba?" Atem opened his eyes, practically choking on the name in his skepticism. "Partner, Kaiba and Seto never shared a body like we did, and Kaiba would never agree—"

"Maybe they didn't share a body, but they're still the same the way we're the same, Other Me, they just weren't lucky enough to get a chance to experience their bond like we did. When you were… when they did this to you, I felt it like it was happening to me. And when they did it to the other Seto, Kaiba felt it, too. If he could feel the other Seto the way I feel you, then they must be the same. And we'll get him to do whatever it takes to make it work, don't worry about that. If nothing else, I'll challenge him to a duel and make that the terms if I win."

Atem threw his head back and laughed out loud. "Now that's a duel I would love to see! He still hasn't defeated you, I take it?"

"Not yet, but he keeps trying." Yugi grinned sheepishly.

Atem smiled and cupped Yugi's cheek again and now it was Yugi who closed his eyes, drinking in the sensation as Atem spoke. "_Aibou_, there's so much more I wish I could say. I can't thank you enough for everything you've already given me, and for you to do this as well…."

Yugi opened his eyes and met Atem's gaze. "You're the other me. How could I do anything less?"

His other self nodded, understanding. "But _Aibou_, there isn't much time and we still have much to discuss."

Yugi gave him a puzzled look. "Much time?"

"You're still in a Shadow Game that must be won," Atem reminded him, and Yugi slapped his forehead.

"The Shadow Game, I almost forgot! But, Other Me, I can't win—I can't even duel. I don't have any cards."

"You already played the only card you need."

Yugi's brow furrowed, and then his eyes widened. "Red-Eyes Black Dragon!"

Atem nodded. "You came into the Shadow Realm through Joey's Dark Game, did you not?"

"Yeah, but how did you know that? Can you see everything that happens here?"

"No, but I can see those who are important to me. I saw Mai's Dark Game, and I saw you enter it through Dark Magician. I can see Joey's Dark Game, as well."

Yugi felt his heart race as he remembered why he came into this Dark Game in the first place. "Joey…. Is he okay? Does he understand he has to win, that it isn't the duel he thinks it is?"

"Yes. He felt it when you played Red-Eyes Black Dragon, and now he's doing everything he can to bring you back—to bring Dark Magician back—from the graveyard."


	14. Complete

**14. Complete**

Joey glared across the field as "Yugi" sacrificed his Giant Soldier of Stone to summon Dark Magician Girl in attack mode. Not only was it just wrong for this son of a bitch to be using Yugi's face and Yugi's deck, particularly some of his most treasured cards like Kuriboh and Dark Magician Girl, but to add insult to injury, Dark Magician Girl received 300 extra attack points for every Dark Magician in either player's graveyard, which meant he was benefiting from the fact that he'd sent Yugi away.

_I'm gonna kill this guy, I swear to God._

"Joey, these cards Marik put in your deck, he's got you thinking they're from your friends. That's what has you confused. But you know who your real friends are. You and me, Joey, we're best friends. We'll always be best friends."

"Don't you dare!" Joey clenched his fists at his side, seething. "You just keep your fat mouth shut, you got it? You ain't my friend, I don't care whose face you're wearing, and you're gonna pay for everything you've done, for all the people you've hurt the last seven months, you got that? For Téa and Mai and Atem and Yugi, you're gonna _pay_."

His opponent looked at him with Yugi's sad eyes, which only served to anger Joey further. "Yugi" sighed. "I know you can fight this, Joey. And to help you, I'm going to get rid of these cards that are confusing you, starting with that Cyber Harpie. Dark Magician Girl, attack Cyber Harpie with Dark Magic Attack!"

Dark Magician Girl pointed her staff at Cyber Harpie and blasted her with a bolt of pink lightning. Joey cried out as the Harpie with her face disintegrated. "Mai!" He grunted at the 500-point hit to his Life Points, but watching the symbol of the woman he loved destroyed was worse. _But just a symbol_, he told himself with grim determination, _not really her. Not like Yugi, who was really here. So even if Cyber Harpie's in the graveyard, Mai is fine back home in San Francisco, probably getting ready to kick my ass for getting myself into this stupid Shadow Game in the first place. She's fine, Mai's fine…_

"She can't trick you any more, Joey," the fake Yugi said. "Come on, stop fighting me and fight the lies."

"You're nothing _but_ lies, you sack of shit." Joey clenched his jaw, determined to win. "My move."

* * *

Atem stood close to Yugi, still holding his shoulders, but speaking to him with more urgency. "When Joey calls Dark Magician back from the graveyard, you'll leave here and go back to his duel. But before that happens, I want you to tell me what's going on, everything you know. Who are we fighting?"

Yugi tried to clear his head and let Atem's tactical thinking seep into him. "I don't know. Well, we know he calls himself Ramesses, and that he believes he's the reincarnation of one of the pharaohs that came after you, maybe a century later. Ishizu thinks Ramesses the Great and a few of the other pharaohs of his era tried to bring back the Shadow Games, and that's what this guy is trying to do, but we don't know who he is." Yugi then gave a brief summary of their last seven months, the shipwreck and their Dark Games on the island with the underground caverns covered in Egyptian carvings. He also explained about the desecrated tombs, Mai's nightmares and Joey's, and how Marik seemed to be the source.

Yugi swallowed, feeling apprehensive. "You don't think Marik is Ramesses, do you?" Though once their bitter enemy, Marik was now someone Yugi had long since considered a friend, and it hurt his heart to think he could have betrayed them. He didn't even want to think about what any of it would mean for Bakura….

Atem stroked his chin, and Yugi could almost see him sort out all the pieces and put them together like a puzzle. "I don't think he's this Ramesses, no. Marik is one of the Tomb Keeper's clan, and all of them have connections to me and my court. I doubt he could also be a reincarnation of a later pharaoh. It doesn't make sense. But he could be working for him."

"Or controlled?" Yugi added somewhat hopefully. "That is what Ramesses does. His signature monster is Reshef the Dark Being, whose special effect is to take control of an opponent's monster each turn."

"So you said. It's also what Marik did with the Millennium Rod, if you recall. His Rare Hunters, his mind slaves, Joey, Téa—he took control of all of them."

"So then you do think he and Ramesses are working together?" Yugi felt his stomach drop.

"I didn't say that. You said you are all experiencing the same thing that happened to you while dueling Marik, right? Mai lost her memories of her friends, Joey was made physically weak, and I—_we_—lost the part of us that is you. But think, Partner, what happened to _Marik_ in his battle with his darker half?"

"What do you mean—?" But then Yugi understood. "He lost himself, too! Just like I—you, I mean—just like you lost me."

"Yes." Atem nodded. "He lost control of his own body. It could simply be that like you and Joey and Mai, he is reliving the effects of his own Dark Game."

"And he's being controlled by Ramesses the way he was controlled by his own darker half."

"It's certainly a strong possibility. And Ramesses controlled all of you on the island as well?"

Yugi shook his head. "Not exactly, not like that. Pegasus and Rex and Weevil, yeah, but the rest of us, he just used the Orichalcos stones to make us all dark and creepy. He and Evan, his 'vizier,' had them stashed all over the island, and he even made up some fake Millennium Items and put stones in those, too. It pulled out all the worst in us and blocked access to everything that was good, just like… well, just like our Orichalcos duel with Rafael." He chewed his lip, reluctant to bring up that particular duel. But then another thought occurred to him. "Wait a second, the Orichalcos duels! Why didn't I see it before? They're directly connected to Marik's Shadow Games! They always have been!"

"How so, _Aibou_?"

"The effects, Other Me! What happened to each of us in our duels with Marik?" He ticked them off on his fingers. "Mai was isolated from her friends, Joey was physically weakened, and you lost me. Our greatest fears realized. And then not a year later, Mai, Joey, and you and I were each were involved in a series of Orichalcos duel and what happened to each of us?"

Atem's jaw tightened. "They were the same. Exactly the same as our duels with Marik. Mai was isolated from her friends, Joey was physically weakened, and I lost you."

Yugi shook his head in disbelief. "We knew Dartz played on Mai's nightmares from the Shadow Realm to pull her in, but it never occurred to us that he used all of our Shadow Games against all of us."

"No, I don't think that's quite right," Atem corrected him, taking up Yugi's train of thought. "The connection goes back further than that. It has to. You said the Orichalcos stones made you 'dark and creepy,' that it 'pulled out the worst' in you. Does that sound familiar?"

Yugi frowned. "Well, yeah, it sounds like you and Mai and Valon and Rafael and everyone else who dueled with those freaky stones and Seal cards."

"No, _before_ that. Who was all 'dark and creepy' and unable to control his anger? Who had the worst pulled out of him so that he actually became an entirely different person?"

"Marik!" Yugi's eyes widened. "Other Me, are you saying that Ramesses was somehow involved even back then? Back at Battle City?"

"It would have to have been before that even. Battle City was the culmination of years of darkness building in Marik, starting with the day he was tortured by having an inscription meant for me carved into his back." There was bitterness in his voice, and Yugi was reminded of his own visit to Marik's underground home and the story Rebecca had just told him about his reaction afterwards.

He frowned, trying to make sense of what had been Rebecca's disjointed explanation. "You know, as we were leaving on a six-month archaeological expedition into the western desert, Marik showed us his home and talked about what was done to him in that ritual. It was really creepy, and I felt awful. Rebecca said I had a really bad nightmare, maybe even about the Orichalcos duel. And that's where all the weirdness began, in Egypt, six months before we were shipwrecked. Which is around the same time a bunch of artifacts from the tombs of Ramesses and some of the other pharaohs in his line were stolen."

"That ritual does seem to be the source of everything, for Marik and for all of us." Atem narrowed his eyes in thought. "But the question is, what makes Marik unique? For thousands of years, generation upon generation of Tomb Keeper males were forced to undergo the same barbaric ritual on their tenth birthday, and none of them developed an almost entirely separate evil personality because of it."

"You think the Orichalcos might be involved somehow?"

"Dartz and the Orichalcos are older than any of us, and he needed the Egyptian gods to raise Leviathan. If the Tomb Keepers were the guardians of the gods—"

"Dartz would've been watching the Tomb Keepers," Yugi finished for him. "And maybe he somehow introduced the Orichalcos into the works when Marik was tortured."

"It's not impossible or even unlikely, and it would explain why Marik's darker half was able to manifest himself into a whole separate personality. The Orichalcos would have exploited the legitimate anger Marik felt because of his abuse."

"But so could the Millennium Rod," Yugi said. "It's not like the Millennium Items were made out of pixie dust and good wishes."

"No, but again we have generation upon generation of Tomb Keepers bearing the Millennium Rod, and none of them developed separate evil personalities."

"I dunno, Marik's dad sounded pretty twisted." Yugi scowled in disgust. "And either way, if Dartz has been around forever, why now? Why Marik?"

"Those aren't the same questions, _Aibou_. Was this a function of timing or was it specific to Marik? I'd always assumed it was timing; Marik happened to be the Tomb Keeper born into the same era as _you_. The era in which I was to return. But… none of that had happened yet. You had the Millennium Puzzle in your possession, but you were still half a decade away from solving it."

"But Dartz was already around. He'd already existed for ages. But that still doesn't explain why Marik and not any of the Tomb Keepers before him."

"Because while Dartz has existed for ages, all of his supporters have not. And we do know Ramesses was connected to Dartz and the Orichalcos."

Yugi nodded as he started to see the pieces fall into place. "Dartz manipulated people to get what he wanted, but he liked for his victims to willingly choose to follow him. That actually was a big point with Mai, that she wasn't being controlled, that she _chose_ her path. But the Millennium Rod, that would've been awfully appealing to someone like Ramesses who wants to control others. And he's definitely interested in all the Millennium Items. Dartz never cared about them."

"Exactly. Dartz had his own agenda, which leads me to believe Ramesses would have sought a direct connection to Marik and the Millennium Rod."

Yugi frowned. "Other Me, if Ramesses was interested in the Millennium Rod and in Marik, then he would have been very interested in Battle City, wouldn't he?"

"It stands to reason."

"And if he was connected to Marik and could somehow get information through him, then that would explain how he knew what happened in each of our duels at the finals so he could use them against us. But he wouldn't bet all his money on one hand, would he? He'd want another way of keeping watch over Marik and the Millennium Rod."

Atem looked puzzled. "Probably, but where are you going with this?"

"Well, we know Dartz was watching Battle City. Valon was there."

"At Battle City?" Atem raised his eyebrows in curiosity.

"Yes. Mai and Joey were just getting ready to go talk to him to see what he knows."

Atem's eyes narrowed again. "If Valon was the link between Dartz and Marik, I suspect he knows a great deal, especially if another member of Dartz's organization took an interest in Marik."

Yugi nodded again. "We've spent the last seven months poring over everything Rafael could give us about Dartz's Paradias organization, but a lot of the files disappeared after Dartz did and even if we did have it all, there were so many associates and so many shadow businesses hiding other shadow businesses, it's impossible to find a link. But if Valon knows something, and if we can narrow it down to someone who would have been in Egypt ten years ago around the time of Marik's initiation, that might give Rebecca the information she needs to single someone out. Duke and Tristan went to find Marik and question him, too."

"But how can you trust whatever Marik says? We have no way of knowing if he's being controlled or not."

"Actually, we do. Well, if Ramesses is using Reshef, we do," Yugi amended. "Serenity has this sort of sixth sense about the Shadow Realm. She'll know if Marik's working on his own or being played through a Shadow Game. Once Duke and Tristan find Marik, I think I'll send Serenity over to see what she can tell about where he's at, and the three of them can work on him while Mai and Joey go talk to Valon. Then Téa and I and maybe Rebecca can see what we can find out about the embalming rights to see if we can substitute my body for yours."

Atem cocked his head, smiling. "Partner, listen to you! You've become an excellent leader." His smile broadened and his eyes got a sort of wicked glint. "You would have made a good pharaoh."

Yugi scowled, blushing. "So _not_. But if I can lead, it's because of the part of me that's you."

Atem clasped Yugi's hands between his own. "No, _Aibou_, you've always had that ability in you."

"I know, but I didn't know how to access it until I met you. We were each of us only half of who we were meant to be until we came together, and now we can each claim what we got from the other. I _am _strong and you _are_ gentle, and we are complete now. We're _whole_. We have been since the Ceremonial Battle, actually. It just took me three years to figure it out." He opened up his hands, then, forcing Atem's hands apart and sliding his own so that he was palm to palm with his other self. He closed his fingers, interlocking them with Atem's. "We are complete, Other Me," he said softly, closing his eyes and bowing his head against Atem's once more.

Atem held him close. "We are complete, _Aibou_."


	15. The Graveyard

**15. The Graveyard**

The battle was not going as well as Monarch had hoped. Despite having banished Yugi Mutou to the graveyard—and his own Dark Game—he'd still been unable to keep Wheeler from realizing the truth. Of course, there was still a good shot at winning. Wheeler's deck was beyond pathetic, after all, and he was purposely holding back from winning until he retrieved the Pharaoh's feeble little Vessel from the graveyard.

And the Vessel's own duel… Monarch grimaced. It had gone exactly as he'd hoped, the desert path opening up to him again, and he'd been doing fine splitting his attention between the two. Even when the runt figured out who he was, Monarch had been able to turn the tables and bring him into an even more painful duel, but something had gone wrong. Something like a veil had surrounded that game, blocking him completely. _Him_. Ramesses, the one who created these Dark Games to begin with! How could he be locked out of his own game? But he was, and where Mutou was and how he was faring, Monarch could no longer see.

On the upside, it left him able to concentrate on Wheeler. If the whelp lost, he and the Vessel would both be trapped in the shadows. If the duel ended with Mutou still in the graveyard, then he'd be trapped regardless.

And the card he needed to make that happen was already on the field.

* * *

_Come on, Heart of the Cards, show me some love, _Joey prayed as he drew._ I need to bring back Yugi so we can win this game and go the hell home._ He looked at his card—Pot of Greed—and played it, drawing two more cards. Neither was what he needed to bring Yugi back from the graveyard, but every card he drew got him closer, and Blue Flame Swordsman and Meteorain would both be helpful. He needed to get rid of that Dark Magician Girl so she couldn't take out any more of his monsters before he had a chance to bring Yugi back.

He set Metorain face down, then contemplated his next move. "Yugi" had one facedown monster in defense, Dark Magician Girl in attack, a facedown trap or magic card, and 700 Life Points. Joey had Little Winguard and Command Knight, the latter of which not only boosted any warrior monsters he played, but couldn't be attacked as long as there were any other monsters on his side of the field. He had Attrition face up, Meteorain face down, and Dark Magician Girl, Orgoth the Relentless, and Blue Flame Swordsman in his hand. He tapped his cards against his chin, thinking. Blue Flame Swordsman was a warrior, so it would get a boost from Command Knight, and it also had a special effect that allowed him to summon the original Flame Swordsman if it went to the graveyard. And there was Attrition….

His jaw set in determination, Joey slid Blue Flame Swordsman into a monster slot on his Duel Disk. "I summon Blue Flame Swordsman in attack mode, and thanks to Command Knight, he gets a 400-point boost in attack strength, bringing him up to 2200 attack points."

"Still not enough to defeat Dark Magician Girl," the fake said.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that." Joey sent Blue Flame Swordsman in to attack Dark Magician Girl. He was defeated, and Joey lost 100 Life Points.

"See?" The fake was smirking in a very un-Yugi-like way.

Joey gritted his teeth. "I ain't done yet. First, whenever Blue Flame Swordsman goes to the graveyard, the original Flame Swordsman is special summoned from my deck." _And that means one less card to go through to get the one I need_, he thought to himself as Flame Swordsman appeared on the field, also taking 400 bonus attack points from Command Knight. "And because of my Attrition card, your Dark Magician Girl didn't exactly survive the attack unscathed. She looses the same amount of attack points as the monster who attacked her had, so that puts her all the way down to 100 attack points."

"Yugi" smiled at Joey, and this time it did look exactly like the kind of sad, self-effacing smile Yugi would give. "Congratulations, Joey, you win. Now you'll get the key to unlock that chain around your leg and you won't get dragged into the ocean."

Joey growled at the back of his throat in frustration. If he attacked Dark Magician Girl with any of his monsters, he'd win the duel. He didn't give a damn about this fake's supposed impending demise, but Yugi was still in the graveyard, and he couldn't win, not until Yugi was back on the field. Swallowing his anger, he gave the fake Yugi a tight smile. "Aw c'mon, this duel was just getting interesting. I'm not ready to end the fun yet. I end my turn."

"Yugi" looked elated. "I knew it! You are still in there, Joey! You can't do it! You can't hurt me because we're friends!"

"We're not friends, you lying piece of garbage. Just make your move." Somewhere his _real_ friend was waiting for him, and he was going to bring him back.

Joey watched impatiently as "Yugi" drew a card, then switched Dark Magician Girl into defense mode, protecting both herself and "Yugi" with 1700 defense points. "I know we can figure a way out of this mess together, Joey," the fake said as he ended his turn. "You and me, we're a team."

_Come on, Heart of the Cards_, Joey prayed as he drew, ignoring "Yugi." He looked at his card and then looked up at the fake, a broad smile curling on his lips. "You're absolutely right. Me and Yuge, we _are_ a team. And now it's time to bring the team back together. I play Monster Reborn to summon Dark Magician back from the graveyard!"

* * *

Téa's hand gently brushed the hair away from Yugi's forehead. It had to have been the hundredth time she'd done it in the past half an hour, but she had to do something to connect to him. A moment after that wrenching pain they'd all felt had subsided, it had been as if someone had drawn a curtain around Yugi's heart, shutting them off from him, and try as she might, she couldn't sense him anymore. Joey they could still all connect with on some level, feeling his dogged determination, but Yugi was just _gone_. So she'd settled for sitting close to his unconscious body, touching his face and hair to remind herself that he was still here, that he wasn't gone, that he would be okay.

_Yugi, please come back. You and Joey, you have to beat this, please…_

She started to pull her hand back when she gasped. She could sense him again! And he was no longer in pain! A little… sad? But peaceful, too. And ready to fight.

"He's back," Rebecca said suddenly, and Téa nodded, sinking back into her chair in relief.

* * *

Joey crowed in elation as Dark Magician materialized on the field before him—Yugi clad from head to toe in his favorite monster's purple robes. "Ha ha, buddy, I knew it was you there under all those robes! At least they fit a little better than the last time."

"Thanks for noticing," Yugi said dryly.

"Anytime, pal. Now let's say we win this duel and blow this popsicle stand!"

Yugi grinned, his eyes narrow with determination. "I'm ready when you are."

"You haven't won yet," the fake Yugi across the field said.

Joey laughed. "Wanna bet? But first, just to keep the whole gang together, I'm gonna sacrifice my Little Winguard to summon Dark Magician Girl to the field." Little Winguard vanished and in his place Téa appeared, wearing Dark Magician Girl's turquoise and pink dress, boots, and hat. Joey grinned appreciatively. "Whoa, she looks _hot_ in that number."

Yugi looked over at her and blinked, his expression softening into something that looked like deep regret. Joey remembered then that things hadn't been great between the two of them ever since Luxor, and he wondered if maybe summoning her hadn't been such a good idea after all. It had mostly been symbolic, anyway—he'd just wanted Téa to be represented on the field along with Yugi and Tristan when he beat the fake. He didn't actually need Dark Magician Girl for the win. But then Yugi whispered her name and blinked back tears with a small smile and nod as if he'd just come to some sort of a decision. He turned to Joey. "Let's do this!"

"You got it, pal." Joey pushed his concern for Yugi and Téa to the back of his mind. _We got ourselves a duel to win._ "First I activate my Meteorain trap card, which allows me to inflict battle damage even if your monsters are in defense position. So whaddaya say, Yugi, you wanna strike the final blow?"

"Sounds good to me."

"Then Dark Magician, attack his Dark Magician Girl with Dark Magic Attack!"

Yugi pointed his staff, aiming a green blast at "Yugi's" Dark Magician Girl—the one that didn't look like Téa—but their opponent was ready for them.

"I activate my Reliable Guardian quick spell and add 700 defense points to Dark Magician Girl."

It still wasn't enough. Dark-Magician-Yugi's blast tore through her anyway, but it only took 100 Life Points instead of 800, bringing the fake to 600.

"Sorry, Yuge, I was hoping you'd get to strike the killing blow."

Yugi still had his game face on. "It doesn't matter. Just attack his facedown monster and take the rest of his Life Points."

Joey nodded his agreement. "Okay, Flame Swordsman, you're up. Attack his facedown monster!"

Flame Swordsman drew his sword and sent an arc of flame through the facedown card. Before it disintegrated, Joey saw that it was Old Vindictive Magician, which had only 600 defense points. Thanks to Meteorain and the boost from Command Knight, Flame Swordsman had just inflicted 1600 points of damage, 1000 more than was necessary,

Yugi cried out in elation, pumping his staff in the air. "Yeah, Joey, you did it! You won!"

"Yes, you win," the fake Yugi said with a smile so malicious he no longer resembled Yugi in the slightest. "But Old Vindictive Magician has a special ability, and that special ability destroys one monster on your side of the field. So before you claim your victory, say good-bye to your Dark Magician!"

"NO!" Joey lunged for Yugi—the _real_ Yugi in Dark Magician's robes—but he disappeared before Joey could reach him. "No, _YUGI_!"

"Congratulations on your victory." His opponent threw his head back and cackled as he began to melt like a candle in a forest fire. "Yugi" was gone, with Reshef the Dark Being in his place, and then the entire world around Joey dissolved to nothing.

* * *

Monarch opened his eyes, breathing heavily.

Another loss. _Two_ more losses.

He grabbed the nearest thing he could find—a book that was lying on his nightstand—and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a heavy thud and dropped to the floor.

No more. No more dreams and proxies. It was time to take matters directly into his own hands. And he knew exactly where he had to start.

It was a pity, though. If he were a lesser man, he might even regret it. But it couldn't be helped. The White Dragon was a threat, and threats had to be eliminated.

* * *

Arthur Hawkins folded his cell phone as they announced final boarding for his flight to Frankfurt. He'd been trying for nearly two hours to reach Rebecca, but no one was answering at either the main number for the Industrial Illusions penthouse, nor Rebecca's or Yugi's private numbers. No one was answering their cell phones, either. He'd used one of those airport internet access computers to leave Rebecca an e-mail explaining the situation, but it bothered him that he hadn't been able to talk to her to confirm that she had in fact returned safely. He trusted Duke and Yugi to look out for her, however, and there was nothing he could do now but get on his plane and focus on Sara Drake. If all went well, he could be back in San Francisco within forty-eight hours and then maybe he and Rebecca could finally have their talk and at last take the necessary steps to plan for her future.


	16. Back Home

**16. Back Home**

Téa was leaning back in her chair beside Joey's bed when Joey sat bolt upright, gasping for air. Téa almost jumped out of her seat, and Mai, who had started pacing again, flew to his side crying out his name, but he brushed her off with an impatient wave, his eyes wild. "Yugi… where's Yugi?"

Before anyone could answer, Joey saw Yugi slumped over in his chair, his head on the bed at Joey's side. "Yuge!" Joey was in a complete panic as he leaned over and shook Yugi's shoulder. "Yugi, come on, wake up!"

"Joey, what's wrong? What happened?" Téa asked in alarm. "Did something happen to Yugi?"

Rebecca crowded in close as well, her eyes round and fearful. "_Onii-chan_?"

"Yugi, come on, pal, don't do this! He can't have sent you to the graveyard, we'd already _won_, come on Yuge, please!"

Téa sucked in her breath. If Yugi had been in the graveyard on the final move…

Then Yugi groaned and Téa almost collapsed in relief.

Joey froze. "Yuge?"

Yugi groaned again, slowly sitting up. "It's okay, Joey, I'm…agh!" His last word was strangled off as Joey threw his arms around him.

"Oh man!" Joey's relief was almost palpable—or maybe that was Téa's own relief. "You scared the crap outta me there! When Old Vindictive Magician—"

"Can't… breathe…"

"Joey, give him some air!" Téa smacked Joey on the arm.

He loosened his grip on Yugi, but didn't let go. "Sorry, buddy. I'm just so glad you're not in the graveyard."

"Your Life Points hit zero before I could get there." Yugi's tone was an attempt at reassurance, but he still sounded like the air was being squeezed out of his lungs.

"Joey Wheeler, let go of him and give him a chance to catch his breath!" Téa demanded, prying him off Yugi.

Mai slid closer to Joey. "Yeah, I've got a better offer for you anyway."

Joey finally released Yugi to embrace Mai, but before Téa could even turn from Joey back to Yugi, Rebecca flew at him and wrapped her arms around his neck. "_Onii-chan_!"

Yugi blushed. "Uh… hey, _Imouto-chan_."

Téa felt her heart skip a beat. _Imouto-chan?_ That was a name only Yugi would use for her. Atem would never have addressed her that way. And he sure as hell wouldn't blush like that….

Rebecca let go of him, and then his eyes met Téa's. She found herself unable to do much more than reach out and touch his arm. "I'm so glad you're okay." She blinked back tears and looked past Yugi to where Joey had just broken off a long kiss with Mai. "That you're both okay."

"What the hell happened in there?" Mai asked. "You were out for almost two hours, and we felt something, like Yugi was in a lot of pain."

"Yeah, I felt that too." Joey looked at Yugi without letting go of Mai. "What was that?"

Téa frowned. "Wait. What do you mean, you felt it? Weren't you there?"

"No. Most of the time he was in the graveyard. Or somewhere," Joey said vaguely.

Rebecca sucked in a breath and looked at Yugi. "You were in the graveyard?"

"Not exactly…"

Mai pushed away from Joey and crossed her arms. "Wanna start from the beginning? Exactly what kind of Shadow Game were you two playing?"

Joey began explaining how his duel had been a recreation of his Battle City duel against Yugi. When he got to the part where he drew Gift of the Mystical Elf, he stopped short and looked around. "Hey, where is Serenity anyway?"

"She's with Tristan and Duke," Mai said. "Just finish the story."

He scowled at that, and Téa was glad Mai neglected to mention why Serenity was with Tristan and Duke.

Joey continued his story, telling them how he somehow got pulled into a vision through Red-Eyes Black Dragon. "It was like I got sucked into Red-Eyes and I could see Yugi in this rocky desert dueling the Pharaoh, who had summoned Red-Eyes for some reason."

Yugi's eyes widened in surprise. "You saw that?"

"Yeah. But 'Yugi' was acting all weird and nasty, so I knew the Pharaoh was actually the real one, and if he had Red-Eyes, there must've been a reason. Then I remembered when he went into the afterlife, telling him that we would always be friends and that he'd always be Yugi."

Yugi blinked. "That's exactly what I remembered, too. Joey, I think you and I met up again somehow through Red-Eyes."

"Wait." Téa put up her hand, stopping them. "I don't get it. What does Death Valley have to do with anything?"

"That was my Dark Game," Yugi said. "It's where I went when Trap Hole sent me to the graveyard. I was the Pharaoh, and I had to duel against 'Yugi,' only I didn't have any cards. Just the Red-Eyes I'd put in my pocket before I put the rest of the cards into Joey's deck."

"So you were each having separate Shadow Games?" Mai shifted a little closer to Joey, and he automatically put his arm back around her, squeezing her to him.

Yugi nodded. "Mm hm. These duels are about our personal struggles: Mai dueling Joey with the Seal of Orichalcos, Joey dueling me under Marik's control, and me dueling myself. Or my other self."

"Duels we'd want to lose if we had it to do over. " There was a slight tone of regret to Mai's voice.

"Exactly." Yugi offered her a sympathetic smile. "But when I played Red-Eyes, I knew who my friends were, and that I could stop fighting myself."

He met Téa's eyes then, and she gave him a questioning look. He returned it with a sort of bracing smile before looking away, and she wasn't sure what exactly that meant, except that once again she got the distinct impression it was really Yugi and not Atem. Her heart twisted in her chest.

Then it was gone. He straightened, a more commanding expression coming over his eyes. "Now we have a lot of work to do. I think we have a lead on how to track down Ramesses."

"A lead?" Rebecca raised an eyebrow. "You got a lead fighting a Shadow Game?"

"Yes. First I wanna know what we know about Marik. Have we heard from Tristan and Duke?"

"They called about an hour ago," Mai said. "They found him at San Francisco State University at some Egyptian exhibit they have there."

"The who and the what now?" Joey asked, confused, and Téa remembered that he'd already been asleep when they figured out the connection to Marik.

Mai realized it as well. "Long story short, hon—Marik is the problem. He was in London when I started having my nightmares—"

"Say _what_?"

"The Munchkin saw him in London the day you all left for Luxor. The day my nightmares started."

"He bumped into Mai before her first duel," Rebecca confirmed.

Téa grimaced. "And then when we saw him in Luxor, that's when you started feeling sick and Yugi started losing touch with the Yugi side of him, all the same things that happened to you in your Battle City duels with him."

"So what, Marik's evil again?"

"We don't know. Likely he's being controlled." Yugi frowned. "So they found him at the Museum of Ancient Civilizations at San Francisco State?" He gave Téa an odd look. "Is that the 'errand' he had to run? What was it?"

Téa had a weird feeling that she should know, but didn't.

Mai just shrugged. "They don't know. I guess he went unconscious before they could ask him anything. Tristan seemed to think it was a Shadow Realm thing, so they asked for Serenity to meet them at Duke's—"

"Say _what_?" Joey pulled back from Mai. "Marik's gone evil again, and you're telling me you let my sister go over there?"

Mai glared at him. "She's a big girl, lamebrain, and Duke and Tristan were there."

"I don't give a damn if the U.S. Marines are there, I don't want my sister—"

"She's a part of this too—"

The argument degenerated from there until Téa couldn't tell what either of them were saying anymore. Yugi tried to intervene, but to no avail. Finally Téa put her fingers to her mouth and blew a loud, shrill whistle, stunning everyone into silence. "Would you two _shut up_? Serenity will be fine, Joey, but we do need to call over there. We promised we would when you two woke up."

"Good point." Mai flashed Joey a withering look then got up to go get the phone.

"I need to talk to them, too," Yugi said.

When Mai had Tristan on the phone, she quickly gave him the news about Joey and Yugi, then Joey wrestled the receiver away from her. He started to yell at Tristan, but obviously Serenity had also taken the phone on her end, because he was now yelling at her until Mai was able to pry the phone away from him. She then put it on speakerphone, and Tristan got back on the line, although they could still hear Serenity fuming in the background.

"What happened with Marik?" Yugi asked Tristan.

"We don't—Serenity, give it a rest a minute so I can talk! We don't know. Serenity is pretty sure he's in the Shadow Realm. He's completely unconscious. She wants to stay here and monitor him to see if he needs to go to the hospital, but right now she's thinking that wouldn't be the smartest thing in the world, 'cause she's in a better position to do something to help him with Shadow Realm stuff than an ER doc."

"Like hell she is!" Joey shook his fist at the phone. "She's coming back here and staying away from all that 'Shadow Realm stuff,' that's what she's—"

"Joey, _shut up_!" Mai, Téa, Yugi, Rebecca, and Tristan all cried out in unison as if they'd rehearsed it. Mai also cuffed him on the head for good measure.

"We need her help," Yugi said, "especially once we find out how to get past whatever blocks Ramesses put up against us." He looked thoughtful a moment. "In the meantime, I think we all need to carry decks with us, even the non-duelists. I only had one card with me when I got sucked from Joey's duel into one of my own, and that could've been a huge problem. If we're limited to summoning only the cards we have on us, then we'd better all have good decks. And I want every one of us to have each other's special cards in their decks, too. Pegasus should have enough copies in the storeroom here for all of us."

"You want me or Duke to swing by and pick ours up?" Tristan asked.

"No, I wanna go over there and see Marik for myself, so I'll bring a set of our guardian cards for each of you, plus enough cards for you all to build a few decks. I have a couple of things I need to do here first, and I wanna call Ishizu after she's done with her vigil in the tombs, but I'll be over after that. And if Marik should happen to wake up, I wanna know immediately. I think he might be connected to the Orichalcos, and I want to know what he knows."

"The Orichalcos?" Rebecca looked at him over her glasses. "He wasn't involved in that."

"Not with all the stuff with Dartz in California, no. But I realized something. All of our Orichalcos duels were emotionally exactly the same as our Battle City duels with Marik. Mai was isolated, Joey physically weakened, and I lost—" He paused, shaking his head slightly. "I mean, the Pharaoh lost me."

"Hey, you're right!" Joey's eyes widened. "I never thought about that before."

"And there's more they have in common. The way Marik's Tomb Keeper initiation brought out the dark side of him, that is also very similar to the Orichalcos. I think that maybe one of Dartz's people might have been an influencing factor. Dartz certainly would've been very interested in the Ishtars if they were the guardians of the Egyptian gods."

"One of Dartz's people… do you mean Ramesses?" Tristan's voice crackled over the phone speaker.

"It would make sense. This may be our first real lead into Ramesses' identity."

"All right. We'll let you know if he wakes up," Tristan said.

When they were off the phone, Yugi turned to Rebecca. "I'm also curious about this sudden interest in the Museum of Ancient Civilizations. I want you to find out what they have there that Marik, Ishizu, or Ramesses might want, especially anything pertaining to the Nineteenth Dynasty."

Rebecca gave a short nod. "I'm on it. I think I'll go over to Kaiba Corp and get Mokuba to help. If we need to hack into their system to find out what they might have that isn't necessarily on public display, it'll be easier if we work together."

Yugi arched an eyebrow at her. "Fine, but just remember you're going to Kaiba Corp to find out what Marik was up to, not get yourself a date."

Rebecca put her hands on her hips. "I already told you, we're just friends. So don't be jealous, darling. You'll always be my first love."

"Rebecca!" Yugi turned red, and Téa felt her heart thud heavily in her chest again. Another moment very much like Yugi, but not at all like the Pharaoh.

It was gone in an instant, however, and he was all business again. "And make sure you stop by the storeroom to get those extra cards before you go."

"Got it."

As she left, Yugi turned to Joey and Mai. "I want you two on a plane to Tahiti as fast as they can file a flight plan. If Ramesses really was connected to Marik as far back as his Tomb Keeper's initiation, and if he was also connected to Dartz, and Dartz had Valon watching Battle City, where Marik and the god cards made their big debut—"

"Valon might know something about Ramesses after all." Joey's eyes narrowed.

"Yeah. And I don't want to waste time trying to reach him by phone."

"It's about a nine hour flight to Papeete." Mai looked at her watch. "It's almost six now. If we can be in the air in a couple of hours, we'd be there by three or four AM local time. We can give him a personal wakeup call."

A sly grin spread across Joey's face. "Pack that bikini, Mai!"

Mai smirked. "Definitely. It'll come in handy for convincing Valon to talk to us."

"Yeah, it—hey, wait!" Joey glared at her. "Nothin' doin', Mai! You're gonna leave the talking to _me_."

"Oh, _there's_ a brilliant plan!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Uh, guys?" Yugi shook his head. "You still gotta call for the plane and pack. Bring a week's worth of clothes, so if Valon gives you anything useful to lead you to Ramesses, you're ready to go. And make sure you each have a set of those cards. Oh, and here's the Red-Eyes back." He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to Joey.

Joey took the card absently from Yugi's hand while still looking at Mai. "So answer me. What did you mean by that?"

Yugi rolled his eyes and leaned toward Téa so she could hear him over the arguing. "Well, at least if they're fighting, we know they're both back to normal. We'd better get out of here and leave them to it. I need your help with something anyway."

He led her out of Joey's apartment, but as soon as they were in the hall, Téa couldn't keep her emotions in check any longer. She flung herself at Yugi, throwing her arms around his neck and holding him tightly. "I'm so glad you're back, Yugi. You have no idea." She buried her face in his neck, breathing him in as the tears began to flow. "I was so worried you wouldn't come back!"

It took a moment, but then he returned her embrace. "I'm fine, Téa." His voice was low and a little rueful. "I told you Joey would win, and we'd be fine."

She pulled back from him, wiping her eyes. "I don't mean that. You're _you_ again. Calling Rebecca _Imouto-chan_, and getting embarrassed at her stupid 'first love' thing, and just now with Mai and Joey, you're just… you're _Yugi_ again, and I—"

Without warning, Yugi pulled her to him, kissing her with a passion that took her breath away. It caught her so off guard that she jerked away and gaped at him. _Yugi had kissed her first. _Had that ever happened? If it had, Téa couldn't remember.

She could see in his eyes that he was even more astonished than she was at his own audacity. They stared at each other a moment, eyes wide in mutual wonder, and then Yugi leaned in and kissed her again. This time she took his face in her hands, kissing him back with an equal fervor, until oxygen became an issue.

They broke off and stared at each other again, breathing hard, and then Téa touched his face tentatively. "I knew it," she said quietly, blinking rapidly to try and stem the flow of tears. "I knew if you came back, if the side of you that loves me came back—"

His eyes widened, large and sad. "Téa, you're wrong about—"

"No, don't." She put a finger to his lips, then slowly drew back from him, biting her own lip and trying to stop crying. Her voice quavering, she said, "I'm not wrong. I'm so happy you're yourself again, you have no idea, but it doesn't change anything. We still have the same problems. They aren't going to go away just because you're you again. Nothing's changed."

"_Everything'_s changed." There was such an intensity in his voice, in his eyes, that her breath caught in her chest. He pulled her closer, his mouth capturing hers once more.

She closed her eyes, wanting to believe it and just lose herself in him again, but logic prevailed and she asked him between kisses, "Yugi… what could… possibly… have changed… because of… a Shadow Game?"

When he pulled back, he was smiling for what seemed like the first time in nearly two weeks. In fact, he looked _radiant_. "I know how to get the other me back from the Shadow Realm!"


	17. Together

**17. Together**

"What?" Téa sucked in her breath, looking stunned.

Yugi felt like a balloon that had been filled with a little too much helium. He wanted to float, he wanted to kiss her again, he wanted to reach into his heart and wrap himself up in his other self like a blanket, not to hide behind but to fully _feel_ everything he possibly could. "I know how to get the other me back from the Shadow Realm—or at least I think I know. Come on, I need your help to be sure." Breaking away from her, he yanked her by the arm towards his apartment.

"Yugi, wait. Where are we going?"

"To my room. I've got a couple of books that should have what I'm looking for. I need your help finding the right information."

"But I can't read Egyptian!"

"Not Egyptian. English. My books for school. I need find out exactly what the embalming rites do, if they have any ritualistic purpose beyond preserving the body."

"What?"

"All this time I've been looking for something complicated, something completely outside of anything the Egyptians had ever done before, and all along the answer was right here." He patted his own chest with a balled-up fist.

They reached his apartment, and he went straight to the bookshelf in the living room where he kept most of his school textbooks. Scanning the titles, he selected two he thought likely to detail the spiritual beliefs behind embalming rites and handed one off to Téa. "Embalming rites. Stuff like the brain getting removed and the other organs being put into canopic jars. I need to know how those processes relate to rites like the Opening of the Mouth. Are they strictly to preserve the body so the _Ka_ can return to it, or are they connected more directly to sending the _Akh_ to the afterlife?"

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is whether the spirit specifically needs an _embalmed_ body to remain in the afterlife, or just one that won't decay."

"Okaaaaay." She sounded completely confused, but she took the book he'd given her and sat down on the couch.

Yugi sat down beside her, already scanning the index of his book for the information he needed. He found a section on the Opening of the Mouth ceremony and began skimming it. "All I can see here is that the Opening of the Mouth reanimates the body so that all the senses are re-awakened. If the senses are already working…"

Téa looked up. "Yugi, what about older dynasties, before they started doing embalming? This book says a lot of the bodies were preserved naturally from the heat."

"Let me see that." He leaned over, and she pointed out the section she was reading. His heart quickened. "Yeah," he said under his breath, then repeated it a little louder as he read. "Yeah, you're right. It wasn't until the Fourth Dynasty that there were successful chemical processes for mummification. The need for embalming arose when they stopped burying the pharaohs in shallow pit graves and started building tombs. The tombs wouldn't allow the bodies to dry out, so they would decay, but prior to that the natural climate prevented decay. Yet even without the embalming process, the pharaohs were still believed to have gone on to the afterlife." He looked up at Téa, a grin spreading across his face. "Then there's no reason it shouldn't work!"

"What shouldn't work, Yugi? You still haven't told me how you're going to bring Atem back."

"By substituting my body for his."

Téa's jaw dropped. _"What?"_

"Think about it! For three years, this was his body." He indicated himself with a sweep of his hand. "The reason he was sent to the Shadow Realm was because all of the parts of the soul are interconnected, and all are necessary for any of the parts to continue on in the next life. But Atem's soul is connected to _me_. He was able to inhabit my body even though I was still using it, so why can't he continue to do that? Not as an actual living presence with me, but using me as an anchor instead of his own body. I've been his substitute before, after all. Duelist Kingdom, the Orichalcos duel…."

That was probably the wrong thing to mention as it only increased her alarm. "Are you _serious_?"

"Of course I'm serious! Téa, we've spent _ten days_ trying to find a way around the fact that his body is gone, completely forgetting that _this_ body is his, too, and it's not gone."

"But it's not dead, either!"

"So?" He showed her the book he'd been skimming. "See, the Opening of the Mouth. It's the most important of the funeral rites, and its entire purpose is to reanimate the body. The body is supposed to be alive, just a different kind of life."

"But what would that mean for you?" The apprehension was evident in her voice. "Are you really supposed to sustain his soul for eternity?"

"If I can, of course I would. He's the other me, Téa. You of all people know what he means to me."

"I know, Yugi, I do. And no one wants to find a way more than I do, but not if it hurts you in some way. You're talking about something that's only ever been done to dead bodies, and I won't—" She swallowed. "I won't let you die for him."

"I won't die."

"You don't know that!"

The frustration and fear in her voice stopped him cold. "Well maybe not, but Ishizu would."

"Right, so don't you think if this would work, she would've thought of it already?"

Yugi shook his head. "No. None of us thought of it because we were focused on the problem of the desecrated body. Everything we were looking for centered on the fact that we have a desecrated body. We completely forgot that we have another that isn't. And I think Kaiba can be a substitute for Seto, too. He did feel it when they mutilated Seto's body."

Téa looked torn between hope and worry. "I'm just afraid for you, Yugi. I told you, I could handle losing him because it had to be that way, but I can't take losing you again, I can't."

"You won't." He put his hand on hers and looked directly into her eyes. "I promise."

She stared at him a moment. "Yugi…"

"We'll call Ishizu and see what she thinks first, okay? I need to let her know about Marik anyway."

"Then let's call her." Téa stood up as if to go for the phone, but Yugi pulled her back down.

"We can't call her for another couple of hours yet. The vigil, remember? She won't be done until eight o'clock our time. But I'm glad we have to wait, because that gives us a little time to talk. I need to tell you what happened when I was in the Shadow Realm."

Her worried frown deepened. "Why? What happened?"

"No, nothing bad. It's just… I saw him, Téa. I saw the other me."

She cocked her head. "Well yeah, I figured that. You said you replayed the Death Valley duel, right? Although you played from the Pharaoh's side, right, so technically you saw yourself—"

"No, I'm not talking about that. It wasn't just a vision—it was really him. I saw him, Téa. I _touched_ him and spoke with him."

She went very still. "You…? Yugi, are you sure? I mean, these visions sound so real. How can you know for sure?"

"I know." Even he was surprised at the certainly in his voice. "At first I thought it was a vision, but as soon as he touched my shoulder, I _knew_."

Her eyes got very round. "You saw him? You saw Atem?" Her voice was squeaky, and tears starting trickle down her cheeks again.

"Mm hm."

"I… Yugi… how?"

"I'm not sure. I called for him when he separated out from me." He closed his eyes, repeating the words he'd used to plead for Atem to come to him. "'_Iw sedjem eny. Iw iash i! Iw ii eny_.'"

"What?"

He opened his eyes, his nose wrinkling. "I called out in Egyptian, but I'm not sure why. '_Iw sedjem eny. Iw iash i! Iw ii eny_.' It's like a summoning. It means something like 'Hearken to me. I call! Come to me!' Which sounds really lame in English, but it just sorta came out. He said he was in the Shadow Realm, and I called for him, so he came. He said he'd wanted to come before, but couldn't until I called for him. He knew about Mai's duel, too."

"Yugi, I don't understand," she said, and he realized he wasn't making any sense.

"I'm sorry. I guess I should start from the beginning." And he did, from the point where he entered Joey's duel as the Dark Magician and was shocked to see himself across the field, to the Death Valley non-duel, to the switch to the Ceremonial Battle. "It was right at the point where I placed the Millennium Puzzle back in the stone tablet, but when he separated from me this time, it hurt. _Really_ hurt. It was like ripping the skin off my body or something, tearing him out of me."

Téa gasped. "Your pain! That's what we felt! We knew you were in pain but then, all of a sudden, you were just gone, and we couldn't get a sense of you anymore."

Yugi thought about that a moment. "That must be when I called for Atem. I was so upset watching him walk away thinking I wanted him gone, so I called out to him. And when he turned, he wasn't like the Other Me anymore, the way he was in the Ceremonial Battle wearing my clothes and everything—he was _Atem_, pharaoh clothes and all, like in the Memory World. I think that's when he stopped being one of Ramesses' illusions and was really him."

"Oh, my God." She closed her eyes.

"Only I didn't know it was him yet. I still thought it was just an illusion. But I knew what I needed to do to win the Shadow Game. I had to beat _myself_. And the only way to do that was to stop fighting. To know who I am, who _we_ are. And I did. I just…" He trailed off, shaking his head and then he looked at her with guilt. "You were right. For three years, you were right and I couldn't accept it. And I pushed you away because of it, because I thought I couldn't really ever be everything you needed me to be."

Her eyes flew open and he saw more tears there. "Yugi, I told you, you are everything I need. With or without him, you are, always."

Yugi could feel his own tears hot on his face. "But I didn't feel like it. I didn't believe I could be good enough. Not for him, and not for you. And I've been fighting that since the day he left, but when you and I got together, I dragged you into the fight, too, because I wanted to be with you so much. Everything was all mixed up for me, and I didn't get it. Then I lost myself, and I didn't want to be just him, either, so in that moment when he was standing in front of me, I suddenly got it. I knew who I was, and I knew how we fit together, and I knew he'd always be with me. I told him that, too. I told him everything—how I'd been fighting him for three years, but you were right all along. And I wasn't going to fight him anymore."

"What did he say?"

A laugh bubbled up through his tears. "He said that you love me very much."

"He… he said that?"

"Yeah, he did." His fingertips brushed her cheek, gently wiping it dry.

"Smart guy." She smiled.

"And I told him that I know you do. And that you love him, too."

Her smile faded. "Yugi—"

"No, I get it now, don't you see? All this time I was trying to shut out that part of me because I couldn't see how it could possibly work with him, too, but the truth is, it's the _only_ way it can work. You're the only person in the world who could ever really completely know me and love me, because you love him, too. He's a part of who I am. He's a part of who _we_ are, and I've been trying to make it make sense in a sort of normal relationship way, but we're not normal. To be honest, I don't really wanna be normal. I wanna be _us_. I love him. And I love you. All of me," he said significantly, "and I'm done only ever being halfway here because I'm afraid of that. I want us to be together, Téa, really together, with all of me really with you. I couldn't do that before, because as long as I shut him out, I wasn't complete. But now… everything's changed. I can own that part of me now. Does… does any of this make any sense at all?"

She nodded. "But what else happened when you saw him? What else did he say?"

"Well, I think that's when he put his hand on my shoulder, and as soon as he touched me, I knew it was really him, and I, well, I think I pretty much tackled him." He ducked his head sheepishly.

Téa gave a sort of gurgling sound at the back of her throat that he assumed was a laugh. "I bet that went over well with him. He was always so stoic about stuff like that."

"Yeah, but—" He hesitated, looking back up at her, wondering how this would sound, but he needed her to understand, to be a part of it. "He needed it as much as I did. We just… we sort of needed to just _be_ together. I can't even explain it without it sounding weird." He blushed, ducking his head once more.

"No," she said, lifting his chin with her finger so he was looking at her again. "It doesn't sound weird. You shared a body, Yugi. I can't even imagine…."

He nodded, giving her a small smile. "Yeah, I knew you'd understand. But don't… this is just between us, okay? I mean, I love Joey and Tristan and everyone else, but I don't think any of them would get it, you know? Not like you do."

Téa gave him a disdainful look as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Yeah, like I'm gonna talk about a poignant personal moment with those two idiots. They have the emotional depth of a wading pool."

He frowned, jumping to the defense of his friends. "That's not true. But it's just not something I can share with anyone, except I need to share it with you, because you're a part of it. Everything I feel for him is tied up in everything I feel for you, and I've been trying for three years to untangle it. Now I think… I think the answer is just to let it stay tangled. 'Cause that's the one part Ramesses' Shadow Game got right—trying to tear him out of me _hurts_. And I don't want it to hurt anymore."

She gave up trying to dry her eyes as the tears started flowing again. "No, no more hurting. There's been enough hurting."

She touched his face once more, and it resonated through him almost as if he could feel it twice. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the sensation of her touch on his face. "It's like I can only half feel when I try to shut him out, but when I don't, when I let him really be with me, I can feel again." He leaned in toward her, his voice feeling strange and breathy. "And I want to _feel_."

She was so close to him now, he could feel her breath, shallow and uneven, as it caught in her throat. "I… I want… I—"

And then he was kissing her again. He'd thought the first time they'd ever kissed had been the most amazing memory he could ever have, but this, now, fully allowing every part of him to be present to her and to _himself_, it was as if he'd always been half asleep and now he was awake and alive. She felt electric, tasted like champagne after months of flat soda. He had to have more. His hands cupped her face, then slid down her neck, hungry for her, needing to touch her everywhere. She moaned his name—_his_ name, but also the name _they_ had shared—and he pressed against her, pushing her down onto the couch. His tongue nipped at the saltwater tears staining her face as his hands continued their exploration.

A part of his mind was shocked by his own forwardness, but overriding it was the thrill of being able to own the self-assurance, something he'd always before felt came from outside of him. But now he welcomed it, reveled in it, even. It was all his—_she_ was his—and there wasn't a part of him that didn't know it, that couldn't feel her wanting him as much as he wanted her.

All of him.


	18. Gone

**18. Gone**

Téa moved in Yugi's arms, and he groaned in dismay when she pulled away from him to sit up. They'd moved from his living room to his bed some time ago, and he could see her silhouette in the soft light coming through the window from the city lights below. She almost took his breath away. "Don't go," he said, pulling her back down again.

"You're telling _me_ not to go? I might never let you out of my sight again." She let him draw her into another kiss. After a moment, however, she sat up once more. "But sadly, my stomach begs to differ. You don't have anything to eat up here, do you?"

"Uh…." He thought about it a moment. "Half a bag of potato chips and a two-liter of Dr. Pepper I opened sometime before we left for London."

"Yeah, as tempting as that sounds, I think I'll look for something downstairs. Besides, it's eight o'clock. You need to call Ishizu." She got up and headed for the door, picking up her clothes from the various places they littered the floor between the bedroom and living room. "You want anything?"

"Whatever leftovers we have is good. Or we could pick up something on the way to Duke's. I still wanna go over there after I talk to Ishizu."

"I'm too hungry to wait. Be right back."

"Okay." Grunting, he sat up and rubbed his eyes, reluctantly letting his mind shift gears from Téa to business at hand. He climbed out of bed and gathered up his own clothes, dressed quickly, then picked up the phone and dialed the number for Ishizu's mobile. After only one ring, it went immediately to voice mail.

Yugi frowned, looking at the phone and then the clock on his nightstand. 8:05. Ishizu was always extremely punctual and would have finished the vigil at exactly 6:00 Luxor time and then turned on her mobile by 6:01 at the latest. She knew she needed to be easily accessible, not only by him, but by the Egyptian police while they were still trying to find the person responsible for desecrating the tombs. He waited a moment and tried again, with the same result. Scratching his head, he tried Bakura's number next. Voice mail there as well.

By the time Téa returned with two plates of leftover okonomiyaki, Yugi had tried Ishizu's mobile four times, the Ishtar residence three times, Bakura's mobile and apartment twice each, and Odion once. He would've tried Rashida, but he didn't have her number.

Téa slid one of the plates toward him. "You done with Ishizu already?"

"No. I can't get a hold of her."

Her brow creased. "You can't get a hold of Ishizu? I thought she always had her cell on."

"She does."

"Did you try Bakura?"

"Mm hm. Can't reach him, either. Or Odion, either."

"Maybe they're just taking a little longer at the tombs. Give it a few minutes and try again," Téa suggested.

Yugi nodded and began eating his okonomiyaki.

"Hey," Téa said after a moment, and he looked up at her. "Don't go all moody again, okay? I just got you back. I'd like to keep you around a while."

He smiled. "I won't. Really." To prove it, he leaned forward and kissed her again.

She sighed. "Mmm. I missed you."

"Yeah, I missed me too."

She laughed, swatting at him. "You know, you are the only person on the planet who could pull that off without sounding egotistic." Then her smile turned a little wistful, and she cocked her head. "But… it's kinda different for you, too. You seem—I don't know—more comfortable in your own skin than I've ever known you to be."

He considered this a moment. It was strange, owning Atem's perspective, not just on himself, but on her and all their friends. In others, he could still see the best, but with enough of his other self's cynicism that he didn't feel compelled to ignore their faults, including Atem's own. In himself, he could see his own strengths without completely discounting them. He could accept them all—his friends, himself, Atem—as they were. "Comfortable. I think that's exactly the right word. And you hit the nail right on the head. Hard to be comfortable when you're not really sure who's wearing the skin."

"Makes sense. It's like… you're still acting like you, but with a little of his confidence. I like it." She kissed him again before going back to her dinner and letting him finish his.

When he was done, he pushed aside the plate and reached for the phone again, trying all the numbers he had with the same result. It was now twenty after eight, and no Ishizu. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Is there anyone else you could try?"

"Well, Professor Hawkins might know where she is since he was flying back to Luxor today, but he'd be on the plane right now. Professor Julius, maybe? He's in Cairo, but he would be talking to her pretty regularly while they're investigating the tomb desecrations. I'll have to look for his number, though."

He got up and turned on his computer, then called up his address book. When he found Professor Julius's number, he dialed it, and was relieved to finally reach a living person—the professor's housekeeper. After a moment, Professor Julius was on the line.

"Professor, this is Yugi Mutou. I'm sorry to disturb you so early, but it's really important that I get a hold of Ishizu, and she's not answering her phone. I can't reach her on her mobile or at home, and I can't get a hold of Bakura or Odion, either. I was wondering if you knew what was going on."

There was a long pause. "Yugi, when was the last time you spoke with Ishizu?"

Yugi frowned. "Uh… a few of days ago. Tuesday morning here, so Tuesday evening there? Why? Is something wrong?"

Téa must have noticed his troubled tone because she mouthed, "What?" but he just shrugged and shook his head.

"I'd rather not discuss it over the phone, Yugi," the professor said.

"Professor, what's wrong?" Yugi repeated, his unease growing.

"I'll be meeting with Arthur in about twelve hours. He can fill you in after that."

"Professor, if something happened regarding Atem's tomb—"

"No, Yugi, it wasn't the tombs." He sighed. "I might as well tell you, but understand, the police in Luxor and the Egyptian government are insisting this stay very quiet. They fear publicity could be very dangerous for them."

"Dangerous for whom, Professor?"

"For the Ishtars, Yugi. Sometime in the middle of the night Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, all four Ishtars and Ryou Bakura disappeared."

* * *

"It's not your fault."

"I know."

Yugi stared out the car window at the streets of San Francisco, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Téa glance at him from behind the wheel. "I mean it, Yugi. If you think for one second I'm gonna let you go all moody on me again—"

"I won't." He turned to face her, and when she raised her eyebrow at him, he added, "Really, I won't. But I'm not exactly happy about it, either. I talk to Marik Tuesday morning and tell him about how well the vigils seem to be working, and within twelve hours, they all disappear. That doesn't exactly scream coincidence."

"Do you think Marik can be controlled to the point where he'd hurt his own family? And Bakura? He and Bakura seem to really care about each other."

"I don't know. But at the very least, Ramesses would use Marik as an information conduit." And then he thought of something else, and he slapped his forehead with a groan, slumping down in his seat.

"What now?" There was an unmistakable note of warning in Téa's voice.

"I also told Marik about the whole 'rift' thing, so Ramesses definitely knows about it. He'll be looking for Sara now."

"You didn't know Sara was Blue-Eyes when you talked to Marik."

"Not her specifically, no, but he's aware of the principle now. He'll be looking for someone like her for sure."

"We don't know that he didn't already know about that anyway. He's been one step ahead—"

She was cut off by the jangle of his cell phone. Yugi dug into his pocket for it and flipped it open. "Hello?"

"It's me," came Rebecca's sharp voice at the other end.

"Hey, Rebecca. What did you find?"

"A whole lot of nothing. According to the hotel in Greece, Marik never checked out. He just vanished. No airline has any record of him leaving Greece, there's no indication that he might have gone back to Egypt, no record of him entering the U.S. No visa, nothing from customs, nothing at all."

Yugi chewed on his lip. "So he used false identification. I expected as much, otherwise the police would've been all over him before he ever got here."

"Check his bags for ID."

"We already did that, right after we called you. He'd left his bags in the car with us when we dropped him at the BART station. There was no ID or anything weird at all, just clothes and jewelry and stuff."

"More clothes and jewelry than I've ever owned in my life," Téa said under her breath, and he couldn't help but smirk at that.

He turned his attention back to the phone. "He must have his passport on him. Any luck on finding out what he wanted from the Museum of Ancient Civilizations?"

"None at all. I can't find anything that would interest Ramesses. They don't have anything from the Nineteenth or Twentieth Dynasties, nothing that seems quasi-mystical or related to the Millennium Items or the Shadow Realm. Ishizu made sure all that stuff stayed in Luxor for the most part."

"Okay." Yugi's shoulders slumped in disappointment. "Keep looking. I'll call you if we find out anything new after we see Marik. We're almost at Duke's now."

When they arrived at Duke's apartment, Tristan let them in. Marik was lying on Duke's bed, unconscious, and Serenity was at his side. Duke was pacing nearby, looking ready to pounce or drag Serenity away if Marik so much as twitched.

"How is he?" Yugi asked, though the question seemed pretty pointless.

Serenity looked up from her vigil. "The same. Reminds me of Pegasus and Rex and Weevil on the island, only they were conscious. Tristan said he didn't do anything that would've knocked him out, so I suspect as soon as he was caught, Ramesses somehow cut the cord or something to keep him from talking."

"Sounds about right." Yugi grimaced at Marik's unconscious form, then his gazed moved to Serenity. "You look tired. You don't have to sit by his side."

Serenity shrugged. "It's the only thing I know to do. I did it with Mai, and…." She trailed off and Yugi swallowed, not wanting to think about Battle City.

"At least stretch or go get something to eat," he said. "We'll stay with him."

He'd expected her to refuse, but she stood up. "We ate already. But a drink of water, maybe."

Yugi turned to Tristan and Duke. "Did he have any ID on him, his passport or anything?"

"ID?" Duke looked puzzled. "We know who he is. Why would we look for ID?"

"I had Rebecca do some checking. There's no record of a Marik Ishtar flying in from Greece or Egypt or anywhere. That's why the Egyptian police don't know where he is."

Tristan raised his eyebrows. "Are we gonna turn him in?"

"I—" Yugi paused, not sure how to answer. "I don't know. I don't think they'd know what to do with him in this condition."

"If we don't, we're accessories."

"Do you think we should call the police?" Yugi asked him.

"No," Tristan said carefully. "I'm just saying."

Yugi nodded again. "We still should check for ID, find out what name he used to get into the country. Maybe Rebecca can trace the name back to Ramesses."

"You wanna go rummaging through his pockets, be my guest." Duke took a step back.

Téa groaned. "Oh, honestly! What a bunch of babies. I'll do it."

Pushing past Duke, she went to Marik's bedside and bent over him to slip her hand into his back pocket. As soon as she touched him, Marik convulsed and grabbed onto her wrist, locking onto it with a vice-like grip. She stiffened, her eyes going blank. "Yugi," she said in a flat monotone.

"Téa!" Yugi cried out in alarm as he, Tristan, and Duke all lunged for her. Yugi pulled her into his arms while Tristan and Duke pried Marik's hand off of her.

Serenity came rushing back into the room at the commotion "What happened?"

Yugi gripped Téa's shoulders and turned her to face him. "Téa?"

"No," she said in the same flat voice.

Yugi fought back the growl that was forming in the back of his throat as he remembered where he'd heard it before. "Marik."

"Yes," she said.


	19. Mind Control

**19. Mind Control**

"Let. Her. Go." Yugi's voice was low and threatening.

Abruptly, Téa went limp in his arms, falling against his chest, then she jerked her head up as if she'd nodded off.

"Téa?"

Her eyes refocused and met his gaze. "Yugi?"

"Are you all right?"

"I—" She stopped, looking confused, then her eyes widened. "That was Marik, wasn't it? That's what happened at the diner, too. He didn't tell me he was going on an errand that had something to do with Ishizu—he said it _through_ me."

Yugi turned to glare at Marik's unconscious form, furious. In all their discussions about repeating the effects from Marik's various Dark Games, how could he have forgotten the effect Marik had had on Téa, how he'd controlled her mind and used her as a conduit? He looked back at her. "Let's get you out of here."

"No." She put a hand up to stop him. "Let him talk through me."

Tristan and Duke both grunted their disapproval, and Yugi looked at Téa like she'd sprouted a second head. "You can't be serious!"

"Why not? We need answers from him. If he can use me—"

"No!"

Téa put her hands on her hips. "I don't think it's your call to make."

Tristan groaned and Duke rolled his eyes as both of them backed away.

"Would somebody please explain what the hell is going on?" Serenity demanded.

Yugi looked past Téa to Serenity. "Remember how Marik took control of Joey and Téa at Battle City? After that, when his darker half took over, he was able to use Téa as sort of a conduit to speak to us."

"And I'm none the worse for wear," Téa said.

Tristan shook his head in disbelief. "Yeah, except for the box of explosives that almost got dropped on your head!"

"That was before _Yami_ Marik took over. After that, he just used me to communicate." Téa looked past Yugi to Marik, still lying unmoving on the bed. "You have my permission, Marik. Use me to talk to them."

Yugi jerked in surprise. "What?"

But it was too late. Téa stiffened again and her eyes went blank. "I won't hurt her, Yugi. I just need to talk to you, to tell you what's happened. I have only a loose hold on her—she's aware of what's happening, and can take control back from me whenever she wishes." She gave him a look that was an eerie combination of blank and pointed. "Like you and the Pharaoh."

Yugi had to fight to keep from snarling at her—him? "Don't _ever_ compare what you do—" He stopped, forcing himself to get back on track. "How do I know it's really you and not Ramesses controlling you?"

"He… he can only control my body and my actions. He can't control my mind. Like when my darker half took me over, my spirit, my true self is free to—"

"Take over innocent people?" Tristan asked, his jaw clenched as tight as Yugi's.

"Express itself where it has found outlet before," Téa/Marik said. "I won't hurt her. It's just that there's no other way for me to talk to you."

"Then talk." Yugi folded his arms. "What exactly is going on here?"

"I know very little. I don't know who is controlling me, only that he has done it before."

"When?"

"Many times. First when you and Professor Hawkins came through Luxor on the way out into the desert. He had me take you to the Tomb Keeper's home. I was to see how far I could push you, find ways to get at you. It was surprisingly easy—"

"Marik," Yugi said impatiently.

"I didn't remember any of it after you left, but now that my mind is free of my body and his control, I remember."

"Then why don't you remember who is doing this?"

"He hides in the shadows."

"And you're quite at home in the shadows. What about your family and Bakura? Do you know what happened to them?"

Marik somehow managed to make Téa's eyes look murderous despite the blankness. "Yes. He has several mercenaries in his employ—the same ones who helped him desecrate the tombs. He had them attack my family in the tombs while they were holding their sustaining vigil. They then took him to the Tomb Keeper's home."

Yugi raised his eyebrow. "The Tomb Keepers home? Why?"

Téa swallowed, and when she spoke, there was bitterness breaking through the weird monotone. "Surely you've figured out by now—he has the place loaded with Orichalcos stones. That's why it affected you so much last year before your dig. He had me meet them there as his proxy and attack them. I was supposed to fight them all, but Ishizu stepped in, sacrificing herself for the others. I defeated her and she—" Téa paused, looking confused. "I'm not sure what happened to her. The others were taken away. I don't know where."

Yugi let out a frustrated breath. "So Ishizu is likely in the Shadow Realm, or another pawn for Reshef; Bakura, Odion, and Rashida are being kept God knows where; and no one has sat a complete vigil for Atem or Seto since Monday night." And now it was Friday. He thought of the tiredness that had been behind Atem's eyes and shuddered.

"On the upside, you, Mai, and Joey _aren't_ in the Shadow Realm," Tristan said.

"Good point." Yugi looked at Marik's unconscious form on the bed before turning back to Téa, acting as his medium. "Is that why you came here, why you want to duel Mai?"

"Partly. It took Ramesses much longer than he anticipated for Mai to be fully pulled into a Dark Game. He hoped that my presence here would jumpstart things, much as he used me to set things in motion to begin with. The pathways created in your souls by the Shadow Games you have played are clearest when brought into relief by another dark force. Because I am the one who created the worst of those pathways in you three, he is using me in much the same way he's used the Orichalcos stones. But when he kidnapped my family and stopped the vigils, the pathway was already cleared. That's the night Mai had her Dark Game."

Yugi clenched his jaw, irritated with himself. "And he knew about the vigils because of me."

At this statement, Téa shuddered and blinked, the blankness in her eyes disappearing. "Don't you start, Yugi Mutou…"

"Téa?" Serenity asked.

Yugi raised his eyebrows. "He wasn't kidding about letting you take control back when you wanted, was he? That's good to know."

Téa put her hands on her hips. "I mean it, Yugi—"

"I know, Téa, I'm not going to get all moody again, okay? I'm just saying." He frowned. "What about Sa—the rift that was healed. We need to know if Ramesses knows about that."

Téa stiffened again, and Marik was back. "Yes. He is quite concerned with finding out who this person might be who has reconnected with their _Ka_."

Yugi exchanged glances with Tristan, Duke, and Serenity. Ramesses didn't know who yet. That was something anyway. He looked back at Téa and addressed Marik. "One more thing, Marik. Why were you at San Francisco State today? What does Ramesses want from the Museum of Ancient Civilizations?"

A wicked smile curled on Téa's lips, although her eyes remained vacant. "Ramesses knows nothing about the Museum of Ancient Civilizations. I went there on my own. Ramesses made several fatal mistakes, and I intend to exploit them."

Yugi arched his eyebrow. "What mistakes are those?"

"First, while my proximity to you brings out the pathways I created, _your_ proximity to _me_ does the same for me. Shaking your hand in Luxor, bumping up against Téa in the diner, all of these things have helped my soul break free of Reshef's bondage, if only for a moment. As soon as he wanted me to hurt my own sister, my brother, my lover…" Téa's eyes darkened. "I formulated my own plan."

"Which is?"

The smile grew nastier, completely out of place on Téa's face. "To take back the shadows."

Tristan grimaced. "Why don't I like the sound of that?"

"You see, Ramesses is so focused on the power of kings, on the Orichalcos and the Millennium Items and you, Yugi, he hasn't even considered where the shadows came from in the first place, and who can control them better than anyone."

Yugi's eyes widened. "Bakura?"

Téa chuckled, an unnatural sound. "Exactly."

"But… the Spirit of the Ring is gone, right?"

"As his own entity, yes. Not even his connection to Zorc could allow him to survive for three years in the Shadow Realm, especially after Zorc was defeated. But surely you understand a part of him will always live on in Ryou, just as Atem lives on in you."

Yugi closed his eyes. "It's not the same."

"But it is, in a sense. You and Ryou have discussed this before, I know. And Ryou is reluctant to cultivate that side of him for obvious reasons, which is why Ishizu dueled me in our old home and Ryou did not. But I know him better than anyone alive. I know what he needs to remind him that he does not have to deny his power in order to choose a different path. That's why I was at the Museum of Ancient Civilizations. I went to retrieve the bones of Kul Elna."

"The bones…? Dude, that is just wrong," Duke said, his face contorted in disgust.

Téa faced Duke. "You want to talk about wrong? What was done to the people of Kul Elna was wrong. An entire village destroyed to create the Millennium Items."

Yugi shook his head. "That doesn't justify—"

"What the Thief King did because of that? No, of course not. Ry knows that better than anyone. But he also understands how what happened at Kul Elna was the basis for everything the Thief King became. The charred bones reminded him. Ishizu didn't fully understand how important that was for his healing process, so not long after he came to Luxor, she had most of the bones shipped off to other museums to study. You know, to 'figure out' what really happened to the people of Kul Elna." Téa/Marik smirked at the irony. "That's how some of them ended up here in San Francisco."

"But if bones from Kul Elna are here, why didn't Rebecca find them when she searched the museum's inventory? She told me there was nothing here related to that era."

"They're for research, not display. I doubt they'd be listed with the museum's inventory. Regardless, if I bring them back for Ry, I know he will stop fighting against himself, that he'll accept the past and know he can still choose what to do from this point on." Téa's face grew hard. "Do you think Reshef can prevail against Diabound?"

Tristan sucked in a breath of air. "Okay, now I _really_ don't like the sound of this."

Yugi folded his arms, uncomfortable. "I think Tristan may have a point. You heard Bakura when we were talking about unearthing the Millennium Items. He doesn't want to bring the Spirit of the Ring back."

"I told you, I'm not talking about the Spirit of the Ring. I'm talking about the power that lies within _Ryou_. It's always been there, just like the Pharaoh's power has always been in you, Yugi. You just didn't know how to tap into it. Do you think the fact that you loved your 'tenant' while Ryou hated his makes a difference? Shutting off your past, however loathsome, is not a good thing. Or are you denying the Pharaoh has a brutal past of his own?"

The words were no sooner out of her mouth when Téa shuddered again and she was back, looking as if she had forcibly shoved Marik aside. She threw an angry look over her shoulder at Marik's unconscious body on the bed. "If you think you're going to use my body to talk like that about Atem, Marik Ishtar, you—"

"Téa, it's okay. He's right," Yugi said, putting a hand on her shoulder to placate her. "Accepting him as a part of me means accepting all of him, the good and the bad. And that's important for Bakura, too. He told me that two years ago."

"But tapping into the evil Bakura's power?" Tristan shook his head. "That can't be a good thing."

"It's his _own_ power," Yugi corrected. "Remember who beat the Spirit of the Ring in our very first game against him? It wasn't us. It wasn't even the other me."

Tristan looked at Yugi a moment before conceding with a nod of his head. "Yeah, okay."

Yugi turned to Téa. "Can Marik still hear me?"

She nodded, letting go and letting him take over once more. "I'm here."

"You think these bones will help?"

"I know they will."

"Did you get them?"

Téa shook her head. "No. The museum was closed. I was going to go back after dark and break in, but then Tristan and Duke found me, and Ramesses cut me off, severing my access to my own body in an effort to prevent them from questioning me."

"What if I could get the bones for you?'

Téa raised her eyebrow in a very Marik-like fashion. "You would break into a museum and steal?"

Yugi rolled his eyes. "No, of course not. I'll call the curator and tell him Professor Hawkins wants them. Universities loan to each other all the time."

Téa smiled. "That would be a start, yes."

"And then we'll all go to Egypt and find Bakura and your family. And with any luck, we'll also find Ramesses."


	20. Monarch

**20. Monarch**

Mai grinned as Valon opened the door to his hotel room. He wasn't quite awake yet, his hair even more disheveled than usual, but his eyes widened in surprise when he saw her, then narrowed as his lips curled into a smirk. "Well, well, I must say I'm enjoying these tournament wakeup calls. Missed me, then, love?"

His smirk faded momentarily, however, when Joey pushed the door open from behind Mai so that Valon could see him. Valon's eyes flicked from Joey back to Mai, and then the smirk returned. "Sorry, don't go in for that sort of thing. Although if you'da brought the other Wheeler—"

Mai had to put a firm hand to Joey's chest to stop him from launching himself at Valon. She rolled her eyes. "Okay, let's not do the whole 'mine's bigger than yours' testosterone-fest thing, okay boys? It gets old after, oh, ten seconds, and I can kick both your asses, on the dueling field or off." She looked over her shoulder to give Joey a pointed look. "And we're here to make nice, remember?"

Joey growled, but settled down. "Fine. But watch what you say about my sister. I like you, Valon—don't make me rethink that."

Valon didn't lose the smirk. "I'm not the one dragging people out of bed at dawn. What the bloody hell are you doing here anyway? Neither of you are on the Oceania circuit."

Mai flashed him her best smile. "We came to see you, of course."

"Uh-huh." He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. "Last I checked, you weren't really interested in renewing our friendship. So why don't you just cut to the chase and tell me what it is you think I have that you want?"

"Just to talk."

Valon rolled his eyes. "You came all the way to Tahiti just to hear me say I don't know anything I haven't already told you?"

"Well, that and the beaches," Joey deadpanned.

Mai crossed her arms, mimicking Valon's pose. "That's funny, 'cause I could've sworn you never mentioned having been to Battle City."

Valon frowned. "Yeah, what of it?"

"Oh come off it, Valon! You were at Battle City, the place where everything went to hell for me in the first place, and you didn't think it worth mentioning?"

"You wanted to know about the Orichalcos. What does that have to do with Battle City?"

"Uh, hello! You were there because Dartz sent you!"

"Yeah, to keep an eye on the Pharaoh and those Egyptian god cards. What does that have to do with anything?"

Mai sighed. "Can we just come in and talk? This could be important."

Valon's eyes again flicked from Mai to Joey and back again, and then he nodded and backed into the room, holding the door open for them.

Mai looked around the small hotel room. "Fourth place in the British Open, and this is the best room you could get? See, this is why I don't duel on the Oceania circuit."

"Yeah, well not all of us can have Pegasus as a sugar daddy."

Joey nudged her. "Now who's playing 'mine's bigger than yours'?"

Mai glared at him and sat down in one of two chairs arranged by a small table near the window. Joey took the other chair, and Valon sat at the end of the bed. "So what's so important about Battle City?"

"Marik Ishtar," Mai said. "It was his Shadow Games that started everything, and then a year later Dartz sucks us into Orichalcos duels that play on all of the same fears."

"Who?" Valon looked confused, then it cleared. "Oh wait, the Egyptian bloke. Was supposed to have two of the god cards, right?"

"That's the one." Joey leaned forward in his chair. "We think he might have ties to the Orichalcos stuff that go back a lot further than Battle City. We need to know who in Dartz's group was interested in Marik."

"How the bloody hell should I know? You think we had some big Paradias family picnic so we could all get to know each other? I couldn't have named two other people who worked for Dartz until I got to play in Rafael's little inner circle, and that wasn't until after Battle City, when Dartz decided to use me to get to you." He pointed a finger at Mai.

She drummed her own fingers impatiently on the table. "Come on, Valon. Dartz recruited you himself."

"Well, yeah, but he didn't ever communicate with me directly, not until after Battle City. Before that, I was working for one of his shell companies, doing whatever odd jobs Dartz arranged."

Joey frowned. "Then you didn't report directly to him?"

"No. Usually I didn't speak directly to anyone. Just did my job, and that was the end of it." Valon scratched the stubble on his chin. "Battle City was different, though. Got a phone call every night from one of the company bigwigs so I could give him the full report."

Mai raised her eyebrows. "Did he seem interested in Marik Ishtar?"

Valon shrugged. "Not that I could tell. He was pretty chuffed about the duel where Yugi won Slifer the Sky Dragon from that mime, though."

"But nothing about Marik or the Millennium Rod?" Mai slumped in her seat, frustrated.

Joey, however, looked intrigued. "Hold on a sec, Mai. I remember Yugi telling us about that duel. Marik was controlling that mime, and we know how Ramesses feels about controlling people." He turned to Valon. "Who was this guy you reported to?"

"Some limey, name of Monarch."

"Like the butterfly?" Joey wrinkled his nose.

Mai sat up straight again. "No, Joey. Like the _king_."

* * *

"Monarch Industries, this is _totally_ it!"

Yugi looked over Rebecca's shoulder at her laptop screen, but he couldn't make any sense out of anything he saw there, so he turned to her, waiting for her to elaborate.

Her fingers clicked away on the keyboard, changing the information on the screen a few times, and then she looked up at him over her glasses. "Not only was it the parent company for the place where Valon worked, it has all sorts of connections with Paradias."

"And check this out, _Nii-sama_," Mokuba said, working at his own laptop across from Rebecca. "That labor dispute that almost kept us away from Duel at Sea? I can find at least half a dozen connections back to Monarch Industries. They're convoluted, which is why the name never came up before, but they're there if you know that's the name you're looking for."

"Why am I not surprised?" Kaiba leaned back in his chair. They were all gathered in his office, where Rebecca and Mokuba had been working since Joey and Mai had called an hour ago with the name Valon had given them. Yugi had just arrived to check on what they'd discovered.

Rebecca rested her elbows on the table in front of her computer and folded her hands under her chin. "Even more interesting, there are business ventures dating back to over a decade ago that connect back to Luxor. That would support your theory that he might have been an influencing factor at the time of Marik's initiation into the Tomb Keepers."

"It definitely sounds like we're on the right track," Yugi said. "Can you connect the company back to a single individual?"

Rebecca shook her head and frowned. "There's nothing. It's like the perfect tax shelter. There's no majority stockholder and minority stockholders are too numerous to wade through. No CEO, no president, no individual of any kind who seems to be profiting from Monarch Industries, and there are no holdings of any sort in the UK." She looked toward the speakerphone on the table next to her—they'd called Joey and Mai back as soon as Yugi had arrived. "Joey, is Valon sure his Battle City contact was English?"

Joey's voice crackled over the speaker. "Yeah, he was sure. Said the guy was definitely a Brit."

"Well, there are some ties to a few Commonwealth countries like India and South Africa. And a few connections to Hong Kong before it was handed over to China in 1997, so there could definitely be a British connection, but it's like sifting through sand trying to pinpoint anything."

Yugi's heart sunk. "So are we at another dead end?"

Rebecca grinned at him, her eyes glinting. "Not even close. We may not be able to connect Monarch Industries to a single individual yet, but we do have a few places we can look. One of them is even close to home. Among the property holdings is a penthouse less than a mile from here in Nob Hill."

Kaiba leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "Nob Hill?"

"I'm more interested in the connections to Luxor," Yugi said. "We need to find the Ishtars." He turned to the speakerphone. "Joey, you and Mai head out to Egypt. We'll be leaving for there sometime today, but you guys will take longer to get there, so get started as soon as you can."

"What, not even a day at the beach first?"

"Sorry. As it is, we'll probably still beat you there. We'll figure out a place to meet and leave a text message for you or something." Thank God Pegasus had sprung for cell phones and service that worked internationally.

"Yeah, okay." The disgruntlement in Joey's voice sounded more dramatic than serious. "We'll catch you on the other side, then."

"Thanks, Joey. And thank Mai and Valon, too. This was just what we needed." Yugi looked at Rebecca and Mokuba. "You guys keep searching for anything else you can find. Definitely see what you can dig up on that penthouse in Nob Hill. I've gotta get going to meet with the curator from the Museum of Ancient Civilizations. I was lucky he was willing to meet with me so early on a Saturday morning. Then we'll round everyone up and head out toward Luxor." He turned to Kaiba. "You gonna come with us?"

"To Egypt?" Kaiba rolled his eyes. "Ramesses isn't worth the effort. I have people to handle that sort of thing."

Yugi bit back an argument; Kaiba's priorities and his own were just never going to mesh. It was best to let him do things his way. "Okay, then. I gotta get going. You wanna come with, Rebecca, or you gonna meet me back at Illusions Tower?"

"Is that it?" Kaiba asked before Rebecca could answer. "The guy owns a penthouse that's walking distance from here, and you don't even want to check it out personally?"

"What am I gonna do, go knock on the door? I doubt he's here anyway."

"Exactly my point." He gave Yugi an appraising look. "I take it that's your idea of business casual. I suppose it'll have to do. At least it isn't punk throwback, although the hair is hopeless."

Yugi glanced down at the black button-down shirt he'd chosen for the meeting with the museum curator and blew out an impatient breath. "What exactly do you have in mind, Kaiba?"

"I can get us in, don't worry about that, but you and Mokuba's little girlfriend and that cop-wannabe Taylor should do the honors. Meet me there in two hours. And you should probably invite Gardner along, too. Tell them to dress in business clothes and not the usual geek-wear. And try and act like people I'd actually let work with me."

* * *

It had taken longer than Yugi had hoped to convince the curator of the Museum of Ancient Civilizations, a humorless man named Dr. Miles, to loan out a few of the Kul Elna bones to him. There were official procedures to be followed and all that, and he wanted to have the bones sent by messenger to Professor Hawkins' office at Berkeley rather than just hand them off to Yugi personally. It took some doing, but eventually he convinced Dr. Miles that he was doing a research project that had to be finished before the start of term, and he was allowed to take two samples with him. By the time he got to the penthouse owned by Monarch Industries, it was a good twenty minutes after the time Kaiba had told him to arrive.

The penthouse was in an elegant fifteen-story building near Huntington Park in Nob Hill, one of the more upscale neighborhoods of downtown San Francisco. Monarch Industries owned one of two apartments that made up the fifteenth floor, but a text message from Rebecca had told him to meet them at the one they didn't own. When he arrived, he found Kaiba, Mokuba, Rebecca, Téa, and Tristan in the second apartment's living room talking to a woman in a dark suit. She had one of those wide fake smiles that Yugi associated with salespeople.

"Ah, you must be Mr. Mutou. I'm Marilyn Carpenter. I handle all of Mrs. Montgomery's real estate transactions."

Yugi shook the hand she proffered and smiled politely, flashing a look to the others, hoping one of them would clue him in. Fortunately, Téa came to his rescue. "We've already had a chance to look around the place, and it looks like it might be just what we need for our joint venture between Industrial Illusions and Kaiba Corp."

"It's too small," Kaiba said, his tone curt. "We can't possibly make it work without the entire floor. And it's about time you got here, Yugi. We don't have all day."

Yugi ignored the slight as he caught onto what Kaiba's plan was. He must have told the owner of this apartment he was looking to purchase it—and probably threw around an obscenely high price to arrange such a quick meeting on a Saturday morning when the place might not have been previously up for sale—and now he was trying to get them into the Monarch apartment as well.

Yugi could see the frustration behind Ms. Carpenter's smile. "Unfortunately, we don't represent the owners of that apartment. Mrs. Montgomery did mention that her neighbor is rarely in town, so I'm sure we can arrange a conference call sometime next week—"

"I'm not interested in buying a penthouse next week. I'm interested today." Kaiba looked around the posh room, sniffing in disdain.

"I understand, Mr. Kaiba, but it will take me some time to locate the owners and arrange a dialogue. But really, I think you underestimate the size of this apartment. I'm certain if you take another look, you'll find it will suit your needs quite well."

"My needs include not being confined in close quarters with these—" He looked around at everyone in the room whose last name wasn't Kaiba and curled his lip. "—business associates."

Ms. Carpenter hitched her smile a little wider, trying not to let her strained patience show through. "Why don't we take another look around, and I'm sure you'll find there are no close quarters here."

"Fine." Kaiba gave her a sort of half nod, then turned to Yugi. "You don't need to see the place—Lord knows you're not picky, and Gardner knows what Pegasus is looking for. Why don't you take Rebecca and Taylor and check out the neighborhood while Mokuba, Gardner and I look around the apartment again. Give us half an hour."

Yugi raised an eyebrow. "Half an hour. Fine."

Once he, Rebecca, and Tristan were out in the hallway, Rebecca pulled them over to the door across the hall. "One of the first things she did was show us the security system. I hacked into their system while Kaiba was distracting them and set up a bypass code for us to get into Monarch's apartment."

"So we're gonna break in?" Yugi crossed his arms and looked at Tristan. "And you're okay with this? Having a record isn't going to help you get into the police academy once you get out of the army."

Tristan smirked. "I'll only have a record if we get caught. It's worth the risk if we can find something to nail this bastard."

Rebecca punched a few numbers on the keypad outside the door, and a click of the tumblers indicated the door unlocked. She turned the knob and pushed open the door. "Okay, let's go see who this Monarch guy is."

The apartment was large with an excellent view of the city. It was richly decorated, mostly with Egyptian art, but there was nothing personal to give any indication that an actual human being lived here. But more than any of that, the overriding feeling Yugi got when they entered the room was of darkness and cold.

Rebecca was suddenly at his side, pressing against him. "Whoa. Do you feel that?"

Yugi nodded. "He must have a bunch of Orichalcos stones stored here."

"I guess we know we have the right guy, then," Tristan said. He gave Yugi and Rebecca an appraising look. "You guys gonna be okay?"

Yugi looked down at Rebecca, who squeezed his arm, but nodded and he turned back to Tristan. "We should be fine so long as no one pops up demanding a duel. But let's not take too long."

"I hear ya. This place is definitely creepy."

Rebecca let go of Yugi's arm. "If we can find a computer, I can hack into it and see if there's anything there. I brought some flash drives, too, so we can copy any files that look important."

"Bingo!" Tristan was standing near a door off to once side. "Found a whole office, complete with computer, book shelves, all kinds of stuff. This should give us an idea of what this Monarch guy is all about."


	21. ID

**21. I.D.**

As it turned out, their trip to Monarch's apartment did not prove as enlightening as they'd hoped. The computer had only the most mundane of business information stored in it, although Rebecca did find enough financial records and travel schedules that she might be able to cross reference with some of their other information to narrow in on Monarch's real identity. She did find more information about Monarch Industries' connections to Kaiba Corp, which she saved off for Kaiba to sift through. Other than the computer files, they found several stashes of Orichalcos stones, a pair of passports belonging to Yugi and Rebecca that had been stolen in Egypt just prior to them leaving for the Duel at Sea tournament, and some evidence that Monarch had suffered some sort of grave illness the last time he used the apartment, which Rebecca determined from the computer files was the previous May.

"Right around the time we were marooned on that island and fighting Shadow Games." Tristan leaned back in Kaiba's stretch limo where they'd gathered to share what little they'd found.

Yugi nodded, thoughtful. "We did beat him in a shadow war. That might be enough to really mess him up. If he was here last May, he was obviously monitoring all that from here."

"Well, at least between the Orichalcos stones and yours and Rebecca's passports, we know we have the right guy. That's something."

"I still would've liked to have gotten a real name, someone we can actually look for once we get to Egypt. All we have now is the Tomb Keeper's house, and I'm not sure if that will help us find the Ishtars and Bakura, or just lead us in more circles." Yugi leaned forward, propping his chin up on his hands. "I'm sick of playing defense. We need to take the fight back to him."

"No shell company is perfect," Kaiba said, his arms crossed. "If they were, I'd have a dozen of them. Eventually, we'll be able to tie the company back to an individual."

"Way ahead of you," Rebecca said. She had her laptop open and was studying the screen. "I've thrown all the stuff we know together and am sorting through names of everyone who ever had a connection to Monarch Industries, checking for common denominators. The problem is that there are so many names to start out with that it will take a while for the program to run through them all. Even narrowing the search down to British citizens isn't helping, and that's a gamble because Valon only knows Monarch's origin, not necessarily his citizenship. But it is a place to start." She tapped a few keys.

"Did you include Duel Monsters info? We know whoever he is, he knows the game."

"Not everyone who knows the game is a registered duelist, but yeah, any familiar names that pop up will definitely be flagged—" Her eyes widened and she leaned forward to look more closely at the screen. "This is interesting."

Yugi raised his eyebrows. "You find a possible match?"

"No, maybe something better. It's one of the reports filed to the university after our dig last year."

"So? We know Ramesses was interested in our dig and must've had someone planted with us—how else would he have gotten to Marik at the beginning and stolen our passports at the end?"

Rebecca shook her head. "That's just it. Someone on our dig was connected to Ramesses, and here in his computer is the _original_ document that was sent to the university. The file was created in May, before anything had been submitted." She tapped a few more keys. "Let me search the university's archives and find the official file and see who filed this particular report."

Yugi smiled, finally seeing where she was going. "If the report was written from Monarch's computer, the author—"

"No, this can't be right." Rebecca frowned. "But he is British. I should run some comparisons—" She resumed tapping on the keys, her frown deepening. "Travel schedule matches, and he's owned houses in both Cairo and Luxor for more than a decade." Her eyes widened. "Oh, my God, he even has ties to Marik and Ishizu's father." Suddenly the color drained from her face and she gasped, putting her hand over her mouth. "Grandpa!"

Yugi's jaw dropped. "What? You can't mean your grandfather—"

"No, Yugi. Look."

She turned the computer around to face him. There was a lot of text and numbers that meant nothing to him, but in the upper left hand corner of the screen was a passport photo of a face he recognized instantly. He looked from the screen to Rebecca. "Professor Julius?"

* * *

Sara Drake left customs at the Cairo International Airport dragging her suitcase behind her, relieved that her twenty-hour travel ordeal was finally over. It could've been worse—her flights had all been on time and pleasant enough. Customs had taken two hours, but she could put that behind her now. She was back in Egypt, back in the world of scholarship where she belonged, away from California and scary people who believed in magic and fairy tales.

Away from _him_.

She shook her head, pushing Seto Kaiba from her mind. It had been a stupid fling, and it was over. She was home now.

Picking up the pace, she walked quickly down the concourse past the barriers, looking for a sign with her name on it or perhaps even a familiar face from one of the professor's staff. She was surprised instead to see two familiar faces—the professor himself and his colleague, Professor Hawkins. She could feel her insides start to crumble. Professor Hawkins, who was every bit as loony as the lot of them. The last thing she wanted was to be around any of that rubbish.

Professor Julius caught sight of her and broke into a wide smile. "Sara! Welcome back!"

She approached him and his colleague warily. "Hello, Professor, it's good to be home. And hello to you, Professor Hawkins. I wasn't expecting to see you back in Egypt so soon."

"The truth is, my dear, I came looking for you."

Professor Julius clapped Professor Hawkins on the shoulder in friendly chastisement. "Arthur, leave the poor girl be! She's been traveling for nearly twenty-four hours. I'm sure she's rather anxious to get home."

Sara offered him a wan smile. "Yes, Professor, that would be lovely."

Professor Hawkins looked agitated, however. "No, it's not safe for you to be here in Egypt, Sara—"

"Arthur—"

Sara's smile dissolved. "Not safe? What do you mean?" Her eyes widened. "Did my name get released to the press? Do the people who desecrated the tombs know I'm the one who discovered them?"

"No, it's nothing like that, Sara. It's because—"

"Arthur!" Professor Julius's reprimand was sterner this time. "Now is not the time for this nonsense."

"How can you call it nonsense? The entire Ishtar family has disappeared, along with Ryou Bakura! Whatever you might think of the reasons, the danger is real."

Sara's mouth opened in surprise. "What? What's this about the Ishtar family?"

Professor Julius glared at Professor Hawkins before turning to her, his gaze softening considerably. "The Ishtars have disappeared. No one has seen or heard from them since Tuesday evening. They may have been… confronted at the tombs while spending the night there."

Sara gaped at him. "By the vandals?"

"Yes," Professor Hawkins said, but Professor Julius glared at him again.

"We don't know that, Arthur. Marik Ishtar disappeared from his hotel in Greece as well." He looked at Sara. "He has a rather… unsavory past, Marik Ishtar. The police suspect he might be involved."

"Poppycock!" Professor Hawkins looked indignant. "Those vigils were working to keep the Shadow Realm at bay, and that's why the Ishtars have disappeared. And you, Sara, you have made a difference as well. By reconnecting with the part of your soul that was sealed into Blue-Eyes White Dragon—"

"No!" Sara had shouted loud enough that several people stopped and stared. She lowered her voice. "I'm sorry, Professor, but I left California because I don't want to be involved in these delusions. I don't! I want to go to my flat and have a nice hot bath, some food that doesn't come on a tiny little tray, and sleep for a week or until my jetlag is gone, whichever comes last. I do not want to hear any more rubbish about the bloody White Dragon!"

"Sara—"

"No!" She turned to Professor Julius. "Please, Professor, take me home."

"Of course, Sara." Professor Julius flashed a look to Professor Hawkins that was a cross between irritation and victory, but Sara ignored both of them and started pulling her bag toward the street exit.

Both men were silent on the drive to Sara's flat near campus. She'd even dared to hope that Professor Hawkins had given up his ludicrous attempt to suck her back into the insanity, but when they walked her to the door of her flat, he took one more go at it. "Sara, please, I really do believe you may be in a great deal of danger. If Ramesses finds out who you are—"

He was cut off by a low, throaty laugh. Sara and the two professors turned to find themselves surrounded by five men dressed completely in black, with black turbans wrapped around their heads and black scarves pulled across their faces. Despite the scarf on the one nearest her, she could see the smirk in his eyes, and a moment later she saw the gun in his hand.

"It would seem that he already knows," the man in black said, and Sara screamed.

* * *

"Professor Julius?" Kaiba frowned. Why did that name sound so familiar?

Yugi looked like he was either going to be sick or strangle someone with his bare hands. "He was with us in the beginning, when Marik brought us to his home, and he was on the expedition where everything felt so wrong. He could've easily taken our passports. He knew about the vigils, about everything we were trying to do…"

Tristan rubbed his forehead. "Dude, the day we had that meeting in Ishizu's office, when all of us first met him. Didn't he say something about having been sick?"

"That's right," Téa said. "He said they thought it was malaria, but it turned out to only be the flu."

Yugi shook his head. "It could've been the shadow war instead."

Rebecca moaned into her cell phone. "Come on, Gramps, pick up…"

Kaiba was still trying to figure out who the hell they were talking about, and then it hit him. "Wait. Isn't that Sara Drake's mentor?"

Yugi gave a curt nod.

"Hold on," Tristan said. "Do you think Sara's working for—?"

"Absolutely not!" The intensity of Kaiba's defensiveness surprised even himself.

Téa agreed, if somewhat less forcefully. "From what Mai said, she was completely freaked out by the whole Blue-Eyes thing. I don't think—"

Rebecca, still on the phone hoping her grandfather would answer, gasped again. "Oh no!" She cradled the phone against her shoulder while she started typing something on her laptop. "Gramps sent me an e-mail telling me Professor Julius was meeting him at the airport. Yugi, he told Professor Julius about Sara. He was meeting them _both_ at the airport—"

Kaiba clenched his hands into fists at his side. "Told him exactly what?"

Yugi closed his eyes, his face a mask of anger. "That Sara is connected to Blue-Eyes White Dragon. When Kisara sealed her _Ka_ into Blue-Eyes, she created a rift, just like when the other me sealed himself into the Millennium Puzzle. By bringing her here and allowing her to reconnect with that part of herself, that rift began to heal. Ramesses wouldn't want that to happen."

Kaiba felt like he'd just swallowed ground glass, all protests about the absurdity of such nonsense dying in his throat. "You're saying she's in danger?"

"Yes. If Professor Julius really is Ramesses and he knows who she is—"

Kaiba pulled out his own cell phone and pressed his assistant Roland's speed-dial number. "Roland, have my jet fueled and ready for me. I'll be leaving for Egypt as soon as possible."

* * *

Téa wasn't surprised at Kaiba's sudden decision to go to Egypt once he heard Sara was in danger. What did surprise her was that he let Mokuba talk him into flying all of them out together on one of Kaiba Corp's executive jets. An hour later they were all back in Kaiba's limo, along with Duke, Serenity, and a still-unconscious Marik, headed for San Francisco International Airport's executive terminal.

"I'm still not clear why we had to bring Sleeping Beauty along." Kaiba directed a stiff nod toward Marik, who was slumped across the rearmost seat.

"Because we need him, and because it's his home and his family," Yugi said in a voice that left no room for argument, not even from Kaiba. Téa still found herself a little edgy when Yugi got like this, more Pharaoh than Yugi, but she squeezed her hands together and told herself it was because he'd accepted both halves of himself, not because the Yugi half was gone.

Kaiba crossed his arms and eyed Yugi. "You know what you need to do, don't you Yugi?"

Yugi gave him a blank look.

"You need the god cards."

The tension in the car, which was already almost palpable, ratcheted up a notch as they all looked at Yugi.

"No."

"We are talking about a deranged psychopath who has sunk an entire cruise ship, tried to kill us, desecrated two tombs, may have up to six hostages, and can somehow use his Duel Monster to control people. Now there's no doubt I can beat this loser on my own, but I also see no reason why we wouldn't arm ourselves with every powerful weapon available to us. And that means the god cards."

Téa raised her eyebrow. The Kaiba she knew not only would never admit someone else might actually be better equipped than himself to handle any problem, he would have actively repelled any attempt at teamwork. The fact that he recognized Yugi had something he didn't and actually used the word 'we' willingly was almost enough to make her think she'd crossed into some sort of an alternate universe. Then again, Kaiba had always accepted Yugi's help—however grudgingly—when Mokuba's life was at stake. Could Sara actually be that important to him?

Yugi, however, remained unmoved. "The fact that he can use Reshef to control others is exactly why I won't use the god cards. They're too dangerous."

Kaiba was no less stubborn. "Well, then it's a good thing we have on our side the one person who has defeated all three god cards in a single move."

"Kaiba, no," Yugi said, but Téa could see him falter just a little and, despite the stressful situation, she couldn't help but be a little relieved when she could see bits of Yugi poking through. "I… I can't. They're not mine."

Téa put her hand on Yugi's arm. "Yes they are, Yugi. You know they are."

He looked at her, his deep violet eyes wide and solemn and entirely Yugi. "Téa…"

"Yugi, you said you were done only being halfway here, that you were going to stop fighting yourself. So stop. The god cards are yours. The only question is whether or not you will use them."

Yugi looked around the limo, his eyes falling last on Rebecca.

"My grandfather, Yugi. He has my grandfather."

Yugi closed his eyes. "When we get to the airport, we'll radio Joey and Mai's plane and have them refuel in Japan. My grandfather can meet them at the airport and give them the god cards."


	22. The Villa

**22. The Villa**

They stood, a band of eight, gathered in a grove of sycamore trees across from Professor Julius's Luxor home, a small villa on the west bank of the Nile across the river from the city and south of the Valley of the Kings. It was late, and there were only a few windows lit; it appeared to Yugi to be all but deserted.

"I've been here before."

Yugi looked at Téa. It was her voice that had spoken, but with an edge to it that indicated the words were not hers. "Marik?"

Téa nodded, her eyes void once more. Marik's unconscious body was several miles away, left behind with Kaiba's personal assistant, Roland, after a few generous, well-placed bribes from Kaiba allowed them to smuggle him into the country. Once Marik had made that connection to Téa's mind, however, he could communicate through her even from a distance. "I remember this place. He brought me here just before you and Professor Hawkins arrived in Luxor on your way to the western desert. There are catacombs underground with many chambers, much like my ancestral home."

"Sounds like a good place to keep hostages," Tristan said.

Yugi looked over at Rebecca, who stood back from the group, clutching her grandfather's pocket watch. They'd found it, bent and with the glass cracked, on the sidewalk in front of Sara Drake's apartment in Cairo, where they'd gone first. Sara's landlord had informed them she hadn't yet returned, and a housekeeper at Professor Julius's Cairo home had told Rebecca that the professor was staying in Luxor while the police tried to locate the missing Ishtar family. Rebecca was holding up pretty well, all things considered. Her eyes were fierce and determined, as if she were ready to march up to Professor Julius's front door and challenge him herself.

She wasn't the only one. Kaiba folded his arms, grunting in annoyance. "I'm sick of all this skulking around. We came here to confront Julius—let's confront him."

Tristan shook his head. "And give away our advantage? He doesn't know we know who he is."

"Besides," Duke said, looking at Kaiba, "you're the one who said Yugi should bring the god cards. If they're so important to defeating Ramesses, don't you think we should wait for them? Joey and Mai should be here in a few more hours."

Kaiba blew out an impatient breath. "That certainly didn't include waiting around all day for _Wheeler_ to show up. Blue-Eyes White Dragon was enough to defeat him before. She'll—" He stopped short, his face darkening even further. "I'm going after him." He turned, the tail of his white coat—the one Yugi thought of as Kaiba's version of battle armor—flowing out dramatically behind him.

Yugi groaned. "Kaiba, wait! He not only has Sara, he has Professor Hawkins, the Ishtars, and Bakura. As long as he's holding them hostage, he has the upper hand, no matter what we have in our decks to challenge him with." Kaiba stopped, but didn't turn to face them. Yugi continued anyway. "We have to improve the odds, take away some of his advantage. If Marik knows a way to get into those catacombs—"

Kaiba did turn now, sniffing in disdain at Téa. "_Marik_ isn't here. _Marik_ is unconscious in a hotel room on the other side of the Nile."

"Does it matter, _Nii-sama_?" Mokuba asked. "If Téa can show us how to get in, aren't we better off looking for them first?"

"He's right," Tristan said. "Remember how your duel with Pegasus went when he was holding Mokuba."

Kaiba looked ready to spit fire. "Fine. But let's stop standing around talking about going in there and do it."

Téa led the way through the grove of trees to the back of the villa overlooking the Nile. Floodlights beaming down from the terrace illuminated an expansive walled garden.

Téa nodded toward the wall at the far end of the garden. "There's an entrance to the catacombs just on the other side of that wall."

Tristan gave the wall an appraising look. "It's a pretty low wall. We should be able to get over it to get inside the garden."

When they got there, however, they found it was going to be a little more difficult than they'd hoped—two men in black, their head swathed in black turbans, were stationed outside a small storage shed that hid the entrance to the catacombs.

"We could jump them," Duke suggested after they retreated back into the trees.

Tristan shook his head. "I'm betting those guys are pretty well-trained, and they're looking out for something. No way we could take 'em before the raised an alarm for backup, not without a distraction."

Téa/Marik looked from the terrace to the back wall of the garden. "We'll need to try it, though. If they are holding my family and anyone else down there, then those men most likely have the keys."

Rebecca blew her hair out of her eyes. "I'll be the distraction."

"No _way_," Yugi and Mokuba objected—in unison and as loudly as they dared under the circumstances.

Rebecca put her hands on her hips. "Oh, give me a break. If he's been in contact with his housekeeper in Cairo, he already knows I'm in Egypt looking for my grandfather. It makes perfect sense for me to come here."

Yugi shook his head. "But it does not make perfect sense for you to walk into his hands when he already has six hostages, Rebecca."

"If he's still trying to hide his identity, he'd be stupid to do anything to me. It's bad enough that the Ishtars and Bakura and my grandfather have all disappeared, but he had no choice with them."

"Rebecca—"

"Yugi, he has my grandfather. I'd rather have him preoccupied with me than busy making new Shadow Games for him."

"She's right, Yugi," Duke said. "She's probably safer hiding in plain sight than down in those catacombs. I'll go with her just to make sure."

Yugi sighed. "Actually, that does make sense—you're one of her 'touchstones,' so if he's got anything going on with Orichalcos stones or Dark Games…."

"Then I'm going, too." Mokuba was insistent.

Kaiba crossed his arms again. "No, you're not."

"You should stay with your brother, Mokuba," Yugi said. "You're his touchstone, remember?"

Mokuba looked distinctly unhappy, but relented. Yugi turned to Rebecca. "Give us an hour, then get out of there and go back to the hotel."

Serenity chewed her lip, looking thoughtful. "You know, we're assuming Professor Julius is here. What if he's not?"

Rebecca shrugged. "Either way, I'll make enough noise to distract the Men in Black so you guys can jump 'em."

Yugi nodded. "Okay. Be careful, _Imouto-chan_." He turned to Duke. "You, too."

"You got it."

Rebecca and Duke made their way around to the front of the house while the others waited in the shadow of the trees. It only took about ten minutes for Rebecca's voice—loud and plaintive—to drift out through the back door and across the gardens. As predicted, the commotion distracted the two black-turbaned men long enough for Tristan and Kaiba to climb over the garden wall and jump them. The scuffle was short-lived, and the racket Rebecca made inside, wailing over her missing grandfather, completely drowned out any noise they might have made.

They dragged the unconscious men into the storage shed, unlocking it with a key from the ring Tristan found on one of their belts, and then locking it behind them before descending down through a trap door concealed in the floor.

The catacombs below the storage shed were decorated in Egyptian hieroglyphics and art that was eerily reminiscent of the series of tunnels under the island where they'd been marooned seven months previous, but that was where the similarity ended. Those tunnels had been cavernous, largely natural, and lit by torches. This was clearly man-made, very cramped, and lit by stark electric lights. The atmosphere was stale and oppressive rather than cold and dank, although it still made Yugi's skin crawl. He found himself rubbing his arms despite the stuffiness. "Can you feel it? He's got Orichalcos stones down here. A lot of them."

"It's worse at the Tomb Keeper's home," Téa said in her Marik-monotone.

"Still, we should stay close to our touchstones." Yugi moved close to Téa so that his shoulder was brushing against hers. Mokuba similarly clung close to Kaiba's side. Since Joey and Mai weren't here, Tristan and Serenity stayed with each other instead.

There were several different tunnels leading off from the bottom of the steep staircase that descended down from the trap door. The only way they could search all of them in a reasonable amount of time was to split up. Since Marik seemed to remember being in these catacombs before, Téa claimed the key ring and pointed Yugi in the direction of a pair of tunnels that branched off to the right. The others divided up the remaining tunnels between them and they all agreed to meet back at the stairs in half an hour to report what they'd found. If Kaiba and Mokuba or Tristan and Serenity found anyone behind a locked door, someone would go back for them with the keys.

Yugi stood close to Téa's side as they started down the first passageway she'd chosen. "How is it that you can remember being here if you couldn't even remember who was controlling you?"

Téa seemed to be contemplating this, although her expressions and demeanor was so unlike her usual self that it was hard to be sure. "I don't really know. I think part of it is because this place is similar to my own childhood home. I feel as if I'd been here before, as a child. But that's not possible—I never even went above ground until Ishizu and Odion smuggled me out when I was eleven." She tried a door handle and, when it opened, ducked her head inside, then pulled it back out again. "Just storage."

Yugi looked at her, picturing Marik instead of Téa as he remembered the story Ishizu had told them about the tragic results of Marik's first foray into the outside world. "That was when your dark half emerged, isn't it?"

Téa nodded. "And when I killed my father."

"Did Professor Julius know your father?"

She stopped and looked at him with those blank eyes, frowning. "My father had many connections to the outside world that I knew nothing about. It's possible Professor Julius was one of them, but I wouldn't know. Why do you ask?"

"Rebecca found some links between them. The professor has owned this house for more than a decade, which means since before you underwent the ritual of the Tomb Keepers clan. And the way your dark half emerged, like it was pulled out of you by all the abuse that you endured. It sounds a lot like what the Orichalcos does to people." He opened another door, finding only an empty room.

"You think my darker half was influenced by the Orichalcos?"

Yugi shrugged. "It would explain why your Shadow Games during Battle City and our Orichalcos duels a year later were so similar."

Téa/Marik considered this. "It's possible." She started walking again and stopped a few feet later at yet another door and jiggled the handle. "Locked." She pulled out the key ring and tried fitting keys one by one into the lock. Yugi nodded, stepping closer to her once more. She looked over her shoulder at him, an odd smirk on her face that didn't fit Téa. "Must you stand so close? I mean, you're cute and everything, but I'm taken."

Yugi groaned. "Yeah, thanks. That's not creepy, considering you're using my girlfriend's body." He winced, feeling his cheeks warm as he shook his head. "Uh, that didn't come out right."

Téa/Marik's smirk widened. "Nevertheless, I should think you would be able to restrain yourself while I'm in control."

For the briefest moment, Yugi wished he had Joey's temperament so he could haul off and smack Marik. Or Téa's temperament, for that matter. Although Marik's control on her was rather loose and she hadn't taken the reins back from him, so Yugi could only assume she was probably enjoying this—at his expense. He scowled. "She's my 'touchstone.' Staying in contact with her is what keeps the Orichalcos stones from affecting me." Then another thought occurred to him. "Why does it matter to you anyway? You aren't actually inside her mind, like the other me was inside mine, right? Isn't it more like pulling strings on a marionette?"

Téa shook her head. "Not like this, no. When I was in possession of my own body and using the Millennium Rod to control my mind slaves, yes. Joey and Téa during the pier duel were like that. But using others like that leaves an imprint, like a little piece of my soul left behind. When my darker half took over completely and I had no other recourse but to use Téa, then I actually 'inhabited' her, so to speak. Not the way Atem shared your mind and your soul, you're right about that. But without access to my own body, my own senses, I am viewing the world through her eyes and her senses. So yes, it does feel like you're brushing up against me even though you really aren't."

"Aaaand we're back to the creepy." Yugi suppressed a shudder.

Téa chuckled in a decidedly un-Téa-like way. "You asked."

"Just find the key so we can open the door and see if we've found anyone."

She tried a few more keys until she found one that worked, and the door swung open. Yugi blinked in surprise. Instead of boxes of office supplies or garden tools or other such mundane things like they'd found in the unlocked storage rooms, this room was filled with what looked like ancient Egyptian artifacts. Walking inside, he inspected a few of the ornate statues, gilded boxes, and ancient clay jars. They appeared authentic. He picked up an intricately carved wooden statue of a warrior carrying a spear. The warrior's head was wrapped in a turban that had the head of a gazelle projecting out from the front. Yugi's eyes widened. "This is Reshef! Not the Duel Monster—the god of war, the way the ancient Egyptians envisioned him."

Téa looked at the statue over his shoulder. "I believe you're right."

"This must be some of the stuff that was stolen from the different tombs last year while we were on our dig."

Téa picked up a gold mask and examined it. "Yes, I think it is. This looks like the burial mask of Seti I. Ishizu would know for sure." He looked around the room. "We shouldn't just leave this stuff here. It's too valuable, and probably powerful, too."

"Well, we can't exactly haul it all out with us. We came here to find hostages, remember. When everyone's safe, we can send the police back."

Téa nodded, putting the mask down with some reluctance. They left the room and continued down the hall, trying various doors. Most of them were open, but they also found two more locked rooms containing valuable artifacts or scrolls.

The fourth locked room they came across, however, was completely different. Rather than being set up like a storeroom, it looked more like a jail cell. In one corner, a curtain partially concealed a makeshift latrine, and in the opposite corner, Yugi could just barely make out what looked like a cot. Squinting into the darkness, he could see the outline of a figure lying motionless on the cot—someone with white hair.

Téa gasped. "Ryou!"


	23. Power Within

**23. Power Within**

Yugi took a step in, but Téa rushed past him into the cell and knelt down beside the low cot where Bakura—Yugi could see now that it was definitely Bakura—lay. She took him by the shoulders, shaking him slightly. "Ryou, are you all right? Wake up, Ryou!"

Yugi got to the cot just as Bakura groaned. His eyes fluttered open, and he looked up in confusion. "Téa? Yugi? What are you doing here?" He sat up, rubbing his head. "Where am I?"

"Ry, thank God!" Abruptly, Téa grabbed Bakura's face and pulled him into a heated kiss.

"Hey!" Yugi grabbed her arm, pulling her back at the same time as a stunned Bakura backed away, banging his head against the wall.

As soon as he pulled her away, Yugi could tell Téa was back. Her face was a mask of rage as she shook Yugi off her arm and balled her hands into fists, shouting into the air. "What is _wrong_ with you? You are _so_ dead, do you hear me?"

Bakura blinked. _"Me?"_

"Not you. Marik," Yugi told Bakura as Téa raged on, shouting a series of threats in Japanese.

"Marik?" Bakura looked utterly confused, but then his eyes widened in understanding. "Is he… in Téa's mind?"

Yugi nodded.

"Yugi, where are we? How did you get here?"

While Téa continued her rant, Yugi gave Bakura the short version of everything they'd learned in the past several days. By the time he'd finished, Téa had calmed down enough to let Marik take over once more so that he could talk—"Just talk!"—to Bakura. Her eyes lost the angry edge and took on the vacant look once more as she spoke to Bakura in that strange monotone. "Ry? Are you really all right?"

"Is that really you, Marik?"

She nodded, looking slightly sheepish despite the blank eyes. "I'm sorry about that. I was just so relieved to see you awake and okay…."

"Well, I appreciate that, but you're not exactly yourself and, while Téa's a dear friend, I rather don't fancy snogging her."

"Yes, I believe we'll all be scarred for life by that one," Yugi said dryly.

"I'm sorry," Téa/Marik repeated, bowing her head, contrite. "And I'm sorry about what I did to you, playing that Dark Game with Ishizu."

"No, you were being controlled. If anyone understands that, I do."

"What happened after I won? Do you know where Ishizu and Odion and Rashida are?"

Bakura shook his head. "No. I don't remember what happened after your duel. I just woke up here. I feel like I've been here quite a while. I haven't seen anyone, but they do leave food for me. I think they drug it, though. I seem to spend most of my time sleeping."

Téa's eyes narrowed in anger. "That bastard. He's been playing us the whole time. I'd even bet my last pound that he's the one who informed the police on us, to get me out of the country so he could control me without you or Odion knowing it."

"I knew something wasn't right when you were in Luxor after Atem's tomb was desecrated."

"We need to beat him." Téa moved closer to Bakura. "We need to gather all the weapons at our disposal."

Bakura frowned. Then his eyes widened, and he shook his head. "No. I won't play Diabound, Marik. I won't."

"Yugi sent for the god cards, Ry."

Bakura raised his eyebrows and looked at Yugi. "Is that true?"

Yugi hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Joey and Mai are bringing them from Japan. I… he has Professor Hawkins. Rebecca is beside herself, and I need to stop him before he hurts any more people."

Téa put her hand on Bakura's shoulder. "Ramesses is all about royalty, but he doesn't know about the _Thief_ King. He may be expecting the god cards, but not Diabound. Not the soul that was connected to the soul that _created_ the Shadow Realm."

Bakura looked as uncomfortable about that as Yugi was about the god cards. More so, considering his disturbing relationship to the Spirit of the Ring. "I can't—"

"Never forget, Ry. You have to understand _why_ to know how to choose to be different," Téa said quietly. As she was speaking, she reached into her pocket and pulled something out, placing it in Bakura's hand.

Bakura blinked at the blackened item in his hand. "Bone?" He looked up at Téa. "Is this…?"

"Kul Elna. Ishizu had them sent to various museums around the world to study. Yugi retrieved this fragment from San Francisco State University. Remember, Ry. Remember and accept the power within you. The power to do it differently than he did."

Bakura stared at the bone fragment in his hand a moment, then closed his hand around it in a fist, his eyes closing at the same time. "Kul Elna…"

Yugi frowned. "Bakura? Are you okay? You know you don't have to—"

Bakura opened his eyes. "Yes, I do, Yugi."

Téa smiled and squeezed his shoulder. "Come on. Let's find my sister and the rest of my family."

Bakura nodded. "But perhaps you should use me as your conduit rather than Téa. You in that body—it's rather disturbing on quite a few levels."

Yugi's eyes widened in surprise. "He can go into your mind, too?"

"Of course. He and my… my darker half conspired together during Battle City."

Yugi tried not to wince. _And I thought _my _relationship was complicated…._

* * *

"I thought we agreed on half an hour."

Tristan tried not to roll his eyes. "I'm sure they'll be back any second, Kaiba. They're probably taking longer because they actually found everyone." Neither he and Serenity nor Kaiba and Mokuba had found anything other than empty storerooms and locked doors.

Kaiba paced in a small line at the foot of the staircase up to the storeroom. "It's not like we're here on a tour. If those guards wake up before we're out of here—"

Serenity stood abruptly from her seat at the bottom of the stairs, cutting him off. "Someone's coming."

Tristan heard it, too—voices muttering indistinctly from the direction Yugi and Téa had gone. After a moment, Yugi appeared, with Téa, Bakura, Odion, and Rashida trailing behind him. Draped over Odion's shoulders was Professor Hawkins, unconscious.

"You found them!" Serenity jogged over to the group, falling into step beside Odion. "Is Professor Hawkins okay?"

Odion stopped and carefully eased the professor down onto the stone floor. "We couldn't awaken him. We think they've been drugging our food."

"Where's Sara?" Kaiba asked.

Yugi shook his head. "We didn't find her or Ishizu. Everyone else was locked up in the same tunnel in rooms outfitted like prison cells."

"He may have taken them somewhere else," Bakura said, and Tristan frowned, looking at his friend. He had that same blank look and weird voice that Téa had before. "Ishizu lost our Shadow Game, so he can use her as his servant just as he did with me. And he'd be very interested in Sara's connection to Blue-Eyes White Dragon."

"Enough of this nonsense!" Kaiba blew out an impatient huff of air. "If Professor Hawkins was unconscious, then she—_they_ could be, too. We need to go back with the keys and check the locked doors Mokuba and I found."

"Serenity and I found a few locked doors, too. No one answered when we knocked."

Yugi nodded. "Yeah, let's take one more quick look and see if we can find them. I don't want to just assume they're not here."

"I'll stay here with Professor Hawkins," Serenity said. She was on her knees at his side, her hand at his neck as if checking his pulse.

Tristan frowned. Her voice had an edge to it that he didn't like. "I'll stay, too, in case those guards wake up or someone decides to take a look down here."

Yugi nodded. "Okay. The rest of us will take one more sweep through. Let's not take more than fifteen minutes, though. We're pushing our luck hanging around here."

They all agreed, and the four of them headed off down the hallway Kaiba and Mokuba had searched before. As soon as they left, Tristan knelt down beside Serenity. "Let me guess—he isn't drugged."

She looked up at him, her eyes were wide and troubled. "No. Something's really wrong."

"The Shadow Realm?" Tristan clenched his fists at his side. _Damn Julius and his Dark Games and his Reshef the Dark Being!_

"Yes, but—" Serenity stopped, shaking her head again. She closed her eyes, her hands on the professor's chest as if she were a faith healer trying to pray a demon out of him. "It's more like what happened to Téa last year than Mai in Battle City. It's like he's just gone."

"Reshef," Tristan said through gritted teeth.

"Yes, except… worse."

Tristan's eyebrows went up. "Worse than Reshef?"

She nodded, her eyes still closed. "There's nothing to him. Téa and Pegasus had a… a strength even in their absence. The professor feels so frail." She opened her eyes and looked up at him. "I have to do something, Tristan. I don't think there's any time left." Turning back to the professor, one hand still on his chest, she clasped the tiny Mystical Elf pendant at her own throat with her free hand.

With a start, Tristan realized what she was going to do. "Serenity, wait!" He looked around them, sizing up the tunnels.

"Tristan, I—" The protest died on her lips as he picked up the professor and slung him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. She looked at him, confused. "What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna bring him into one of the empty storerooms. It's too cramped here in this tunnel, considering what happened the last time you tried to summon Mystical Elf."

Her eyes widened. "You're not going to try to stop me?"

He shook his head. "I learned a long time ago not to get in the way of people who have an ability I don't really understand. If there's even a chance you can help the professor, I know you've gotta try. You're the only one who can." He offered her a wry grin. "Besides, I know better than to piss you off."

She looked bewildered, but nodded, following him into a nearby empty room. He laid the professor down on the floor once more, then stepped back so Serenity could kneel beside him. When she did, Tristan stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, bracing himself against her back.

She craned her neck to look up at him, confused again. "Now what are you doing?"

"Backing you up. If you're going to risk blowing yourself across the room, I'd rather you land on me than the stone walls."

She frowned, an expression he couldn't quite read in her eyes. After a moment, she nodded again, then turned back to the professor. "I summon Mystical Elf!"

It felt like an explosion. A wave of energy slammed into them, propelling Serenity back against him and sending them both flying into the wall behind them. Tristan hit hard, his back crashing against solid stone as Serenity was driven against his chest, knocking the wind out of him. The wave of energy seemed to pass right through them and then was gone.

Serenity quickly rolled off of Tristan. "Tristan! Oh, my God, what did I do? Are you all right?"

She helped him sit up, and he nodded, holding up a hand for her to wait while he regained his breath. When he did, he wheezed, then nodded again. "It's… okay. I'm… good."

"No, you're not!" She set about examining him, but seemed a little more panicked and less methodical than usual.

"I'm okay, really," he said, wincing at the pain in his back. "Just got the wind knocked out of me, that's all."

"I am so sorry, I never should've tried that. I knew what happened the last time, I knew we hadn't figured out what the key was. I shouldn't have—"

"Serenity, stop." He put his hand on her shoulder. "You did what you had to do, okay? I'm a little sore, but I'll survive."

"The professor!" She scrambled up from the wall and back over to where Professor Hawkins lay still as before. Putting her hands back on his chest, she shook her head. "The explosion or whatever that was didn't affect him, but he's still just… not there." She looked back at Tristan, blinking back tears. "I can't help him, Tristan. I don't know what to do."

He made his way over to them, a little more slowly than Serenity had managed. Grasping her shoulders, he turned her toward him. "Yes, you do, Serenity. You might not be able to use Mystical Elf, but you're a medic. This is what you do."

His words almost seemed to flip a switch in her brain. She exhaled loudly, and the panic left her eyes. "You're right." She turned back to the professor. "We need to get him out of here and to a hospital."

"A hospital? Can they do anything if this is a Shadow Realm thing?"

"No, but this is different than Marik. There's something else going on here, too. He needs an IV and a CT scan."

Tristan nodded. "Okay. As soon as the others get back, we'll get him back above ground, and we can go from there." He sat down beside the professor with a grunt. "I'm sick of being the one who always gets stuck hauling around the unconscious bodies. Someone else can carry him out of here."

Serenity put her hand on his arm. "Are you okay? You might have a concussion from that blast."

He shook his head. "No, I'm good. My back hurts like hell, but I didn't hit my head."

"I'm sorry, Tristan. I shouldn't have—"

"Yes, you should have." He tried to smile at her but, with the pain in his back, it probably came out more like a grimace. "You have a gift, Serenity. Don't ever apologize for using it."

She sighed. "What good is a gift if I can't even open it?"

"We'll figure out how to do it."

Her eyes drifted back over to Professor Hawkins. "I just hope we figure it out in time."


	24. Waiting

**24. Waiting**

Raymond Julius stared into the empty cell wondering exactly when everything had gone so completely to hell. And _how_? How had they _known_?

Marik. It had to be Marik. Except… Julius had expected them to eventually work out that Marik was the one who'd set everything into motion, so he'd taken great pains not only to ensure that Marik would be unable to talk to them, but that he also had no clue as to his master's identity. He'd never even heard the name _Monarch_, let alone connected that to Julius, and even if he had, he was in the Shadow Realm thanks to Reshef the Dark Being. And yet, less than thirty hours ago, _Seto Kaiba_ had been to "Monarch's" San Francisco penthouse convincing his idiot neighbor's real estate broker he wanted to purchase it. Then, while Julius was taking care of things at the underground dwelling that had once been the ancestral home of the Tomb Keepers' Clan, Arthur Hawkins' brat of a granddaughter shows up, first at his Cairo house, and then here at his Luxor villa. It took almost his entire staff to handle her, so no one even noticed that the others managed to knock out not one, but _two_ of those damnable mercenaries who were supposed to be guarding the catacombs, and make off with every single one of his hostages.

Well, all but two, anyway. Which meant the situation was still salvageable. Ishizu Ishtar was still under his control, and Sara Drake he'd kept at the Tomb Keepers' crypt. After the death of Hasam Ishtar, his children had abandoned the home that had been in their family for a hundred generations—Marik to chase after vengeance, and Ishizu to chase after Marik. Already a home to darkness thanks both to the Millennium Items and the Orichalcos stones Julius himself had introduced to Hasam, it had been the perfect location from which to conduct his other business. Of course, that location had no doubt been compromised as well. If they had somehow connected Ramesses to both Monarch and Julius, then surely the Tomb Keeper's home had also been discovered. Fortunately, both Sara Drake and Ishizu Ishtar had been safely removed as soon as he'd been notified of the break-in at his villa, and both still remained firmly in his control. Not to mention Arthur Hawkins and Marik Ishtar, who were still trapped in the Shadow Realm, even if their physical bodies had been recovered.

The question, then, was how to use this to his advantage. He no longer had his anonymity, but he still had the upper hand. And without the need to protect his identity, there was no longer the need for skulking around and using disguised proxies. Now he could take them on himself. He could even choose the battleground.

Nothing but a minor setback, really. It was time for the real fight to begin.

* * *

Yugi's nose burned with the smell of antiseptic and the stench of disease it could never quite cover up no matter how clean and modern the hospital. He tried to put it out of his mind, along with the ache in his back from the hard, plastic chair that would not allow him to get comfortable. Taking Rebecca's hand in his, he squeezed. "How you holding up?"

She shook her head, her eyes looking almost as Téa's had when she was being controlled by Marik. "I'm okay."

Yugi didn't challenge her answer, but he knew better. When he first saw Professor Hawkins draped over Tristan's shoulder as they met up inside the catacombs, Yugi had felt almost sick with rage and worry, but when they met Rebecca and Duke back under the sycamore trees across from Julius's villa and she'd seen her grandfather's condition, she'd seemed to almost collapse in on herself. She'd stayed quiet through their entire trip to the hospital and through the various questions by doctors trying to ascertain what had happened. Now, as they sat in a cramped waiting room while the doctors performed more tests, she mostly sat rigid, as if gathering strength for a coming battle.

_Come to think of it, that's probably exactly what she's doing._

"He'll be fine," Téa said, leaning across Yugi to put a hand on Rebecca's arm. "How many times have we seen this before? It will be just fine as soon as we beat Ramesses. You'll see."

Rebecca nodded numbly, and Yugi swallowed over the queasy feeling in his stomach that this was somehow different. He glanced across the room to where Serenity sat huddled in a chair with Tristan at her side. She'd been the one to insist on bringing the professor to the hospital—not an unusual request considering his condition, except… Yugi bit the inside of his cheek. Except with Marik, she'd figured it wasn't worth seeing a regular doctor because they wouldn't know what to do with anything related to the Shadow Realm. So why was she so insistent on getting Professor Hawkins to an ordinary hospital as soon as they could?

Duke, sitting across a low table from Rebecca, leaned forward to look her in the eye. "Téa's right, Becks. As soon as we hear from the docs, we're gonna go find this Julius bastard, and it'll be all over. Hell, I'll bet Kaiba and Bakura and the Ishtars have already figured out how to nail this guy." Kaiba had gone back to the hotel where he'd left Marik's unconscious body with Roland. Bakura, Odion, and Rashida, all of whom had been found okay, had gone with him so that Bakura and Odion could check on Marik and they could strategize while the others went to the hospital. Kaiba and Odion had been particularly concerned with the fact that they hadn't been able to find either Sara Drake or Ishizu.

"He's right. Seto will get him, and your grandfather will be good as new," Mokuba said, nudging her with his shoulder. He was sitting next to Rebecca on the other side from Yugi.

Rebecca nodded again. "I know." She turned to Yugi. "But I'd like to stay here with Gramps, if you don't mind. Unless you think you'll need me."

Yugi squeezed her hand again. "No, you stay here. Mokuba and Kaiba should be able to take care of anything computer-related that comes up, and once Joey and Mai get here, we should have the dueling stuff covered, too."

"Did somebody mention my name?"

Yugi looked up to see Joey and Mai walking toward them down the hospital corridor.

"Joey!" Serenity jumped up from her seat and flung herself at her brother. The force of her weight turned Joey to the side away from Mai, revealing another figure standing behind them.

Yugi gasped. "Grandpa!" Like Serenity, he jumped up from his seat. "What are you doing here?"

"You think you can call me and tell me to meet Joey and Mai at the airport with the Egyptian god cards, and I'm not going to come along and see what's going on? I had my bags packed five minutes after I got off the phone with you!"

Yugi hugged his grandfather, reveling in the familiar smell of sandalwood soap and the scratchiness of his beard against his cheek. "It's good to see you, Grandpa. I've really missed you."

"Me too, my boy." Grandpa then stepped back. "How is Arthur?"

Yugi shook his head. "We don't know. He was probably involved in some sort of Shadow Game, so naturally the doctors aren't really sure how to help him. But at least whenever anyone gets caught in the Shadow Realm, they come out of it once we beat the bad guy. I'm sure he'll be fine when we end this thing."

A troubled look crossed his grandfather's eyes, but he nodded and then went over to Rebecca to offer his condolences. "He's a strong man, Rebecca, and he loves you a great deal."

"Thank you, Dr. Mutou."

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to take a moment to catch up with my grandson." He pulled Yugi by the arm. "Come take a walk with me and fill me in on everything that's going on."

As soon as they started off down the hall, Yugi began explaining what they'd learned about Professor Julius and Ramesses, but his grandfather cut him short. "I know all that, Yugi. Joey and Mai gave me the whole story on the flight over. I have something else I need to talk to you about. About Arthur and Rebecca."

Yugi stopped and looked at his grandfather, frowning. "What about them?"

"I don't suppose Rebecca mentioned having a talk with her grandfather, did she?"

"About what?"

Grandpa sighed. "I didn't think so. He'd planned on telling her after her birthday, but with Christmas and the tournament and everything that happened since then, I didn't think he'd gotten around to it yet."

Yugi's stomach made another uneasy dip. "Tell her what?"

"Yugi, Professor Hawkins has Alzheimer's."

Yugi's jaw dropped. "He… but… _Alzheimer's_?"

Grandpa nodded, his eyes sad. "I'm afraid so. He was diagnosed last summer when he and Rebecca were in Cairo preparing to move back to America. Apparently, his housekeeper found him wandering around outside one night, so he shipped Rebecca off to her other grandparents and went to see the doctor. He's on medication now, but it's only a matter of time before that doesn't work, either."

"Oh, man." Yugi shook his head, then looked over his shoulder back towards the waiting room where Rebecca sat beside Mokuba. "Poor Rebecca. She's gonna be devastated." He turned back to his grandfather and frowned. "Why are you telling me this if Rebecca doesn't know yet? How do you even know?"

"Because he made me the executor of his will and gave me medical power of attorney. He hasn't told Rebecca yet because he wanted to wait until she turned fourteen. In California, a young person can be emancipated and treated as an adult once they're fourteen, if their guardian signs off on it and they have means of support and all that, which, of course, Rebecca does. Now that she's turned fourteen, Arthur was going to talk to her and then arrange for her to be emancipated so that her other grandparents couldn't try and take custody of her. I guess they aren't very understanding of how bright and capable she is."

Yugi nodded, numb, as he tried to absorb what his grandfather was telling him. "She hates visiting them. Says they treat her like a little kid."

"Exactly. But I doubt he's had time to make any of the arrangements yet, what with the holidays and the tournament."

Yugi clenched his fists. "He'll make them when he wakes up."

His grandfather put a hand on his shoulder. "That's just it, Yugi. I'm very worried about what the Shadow Realm will do to him. You and I both have had experiences with that place. It's difficult for even the strongest souls and minds to take. Why, even poor Mai Valentine has had such difficulty recovering from what happened to her in the Shadow Realm, and she's so young and strong and vivacious and luscious—"

"Never mind Mai," Yugi cut off his grandfather's lecherous train of thought, steering him back on track. "Professor Hawkins is strong, too. Even if he does have… even if he's not as young as he used to be, he can hold his own. He did during the whole Orichalcos thing."

"I hope so, Yugi, I really do. But…." Grandpa trailed off as he looked down the hall toward Rebecca. "But if he doesn't, she's going to need you. You're the closest thing she has to family except for her other grandparents, and she'll need you to stand by her—to fight for her, if they try to take her away."

"Stop!" Yugi turned away from his grandfather. "Everything's going to be fine, Grandpa! We're going to get the bad guy like we always do, and then everyone he hurt will be fine, including Professor Hawkins."

Grandpa sighed. "I hope you're right, Yugi. I hope you're right."

"I am," Yugi said, his voice tight. "I—"

Yugi's cell phone ringing in his pocket cut him off. He picked it up and looked at the caller ID, hoping it was Odion or Kaiba with news about Marik. Instead, it was a local number, one that looked familiar, but he couldn't place it. Clicking the talk button, he put the phone to his ear. "Hello, this is Yugi Mutou."

"Hello, Yugi. I'd say it's about time we had a chat, wouldn't you?"

Yugi's blood froze and he gripped the phone tighter. When he spoke, it was with the low, menacing growl of the Pharaoh.

"I'd say it's long overdue, Professor Julius."

* * *

Kaiba sat alone on the veranda of his very secluded hotel suite overlooking the Nile. The sky above him was still ink black, but he knew on the other side of the hotel it would be just starting to turn pink—sunrise was only an hour away. Yugi and his gang of dorks—Wheeler and Valentine among them once more—had returned about an hour ago from wasting an inordinate amount of time at the hospital. They seemed to think that just because Julius had called Yugi and arranged a little tête-à-tête at sunrise in the old Ishtar family home, that meant they should sit around and do nothing until then. Kaiba couldn't fathom letting that slime call the shots, but Yugi insisted there was nothing to be gained by going after him earlier. Now that he knew they knew who he was, Yugi had reasoned, he wouldn't let them find him until he was ready. 

So here they sat, doing _nothing_.

Kaiba would've washed his hands of the whole thing and gone after Julius by himself if it weren't for the fact that the bastard had Sara, and if she really was some sort of present-day version of Kisara and was connected to Blue-Eyes, he couldn't be completely sure that Julius wouldn't have some way of using that connection to somehow stop Blue-Eyes from attacking him, the way Sara had stopped Blue-Eyes from attacking when he was showing her how to play Duel Monsters back at Kaiba Corp.

He shook his head, chagrined. He'd been around the geek squad too long. Their superstitious nonsense was starting to rub off on him.

The fact was, as much as it infuriated him to admit it, he needed Yugi. There was only one force in Duel Monsters more powerful than three Blue-Eyes White Dragons—the three Egyptian gods. And like it or not, it was Yugi, not Kaiba, who wielded them. He'd tried to convince Yugi that the two of them should go alone, and then when Valentine and Wheeler pitched a fit, that it should just be the four duelists at most. But Yugi, remembering all that 'touchstone' nonsense from the island last spring, had insisted that Mokuba, Gardner, Taylor, and Wheeler's sister tag along. Odion and his wife, meanwhile, had been instructed by Julius to bring Marik to the Ishtar's current house where Julius had assured them Ishizu would be waiting to face them as his proxy. Bakura was going with them. Duke, Rebecca and, apparently, Yugi's grandfather, were staying at the hospital with Hawkins.

Kaiba ground his teeth, frustrated with having to put his faith not only in Yugi, but also in five other losers plus his own little brother. Frustrated with having to wait and let their enemy set the terms. Biting back a growl, he looked at his cards spread out before him. He'd been biding his time by refining his deck, and his three Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards were, as always, at its very center. He picked up one of the treasured monster cards and looked at it, trying to tell himself it was just a card, that this was just a game, that there was nothing mythical or magical going on here. Julius was just some sick and twisted psychopath, and Yugi and his friends were just as crazy for buying into it. But it was only a half-hearted effort. Traveling to ancient Egypt via some dark tabletop RPG based on Yugi's memories had cured him of complete denial about the mystical side of the game, the Millennium Items, and Yugi's split personality itself. And if there could be two Yugis, past and present, then there certainly could be two Kisaras. And two…

No. He couldn't quite go there, not with himself.

He ran his thumb over the surface of the card, so utterly ordinary in its cardboard, ink, and foil, and yet, so powerful, so close to his heart. When he looked at the card, he saw the living dragon, majestic and breathtaking, beautiful and lethal. And he saw Sara, equally majestic, equally beautiful, but in danger and defenseless without the power she'd given over to him thousands of years ago.

_Not me, dammit, and not her. An illusion that looks like us._

Yeah, right. Like the other Yugi was an _illusion_.

Kaiba closed his eyes. Myth or not, he couldn't risk Sara, and he couldn't risk Blue-Eyes. He had to have more strength, a different strength. And the only cards with more strength than Blue-Eyes were the Egyptian gods.

And so he would have to wait. And prepare. But God help Julius when they did find him. There wasn't a force on this planet, magical or otherwise, that could protect anyone who messed with Seto Kaiba, his company, or the people that mattered to him.

* * *

Yugi stared at the three cards in his hand: Slifer the Sky Dragon, Obelisk the Tormentor, and Winged Dragon of Ra. He hadn't held the cards or even so much as looked at them in almost three years since he first locked them into a safe deposit box after returning home from the trip to Egypt that had finally sent his other self home. Holding them now, contemplating a strategy that would actually _utilize_ them, felt simultaneously foreign to him and completely natural, as if he had been born to hold them. Even after everything that had happened, after finally ending the struggle with himself over his identity and Atem's, it still was hard for him to feel as if the three god cards could ever truly belong to him. And yet…. 

"They are yours, you know."

Téa was watching him from across the room. He smiled up at her. "I know. It's just…"

She came over and sat on the arm of his chair, slipping her arm around his shoulder and resting her head on top of his. "I know."

He sighed. She did know, but not everything. She didn't know about Professor Hawkins and the disease Yugi couldn't even bring himself to think the name of, or why he had almost agreed with Kaiba that they should go _now_ rather than wait for sunrise, even though he knew it would do no good. She didn't know that whenever he closed his eyes, he could see his mentor and Sara Drake lost in the Shadow Realm, their eyes pleading with him to find them before the darkness took them. She didn't know that he could see his other self's eyes dimming with every passing second.

But she knew _him_. And she knew his power, and Atem's power, and she knew where they intersected.

She reached across him, taking the pendants that hung from his neck into her hand. "You're wearing Atem's cartouche."

He looked up at her, not sure from her tone whether she was surprised or… well, he half expected her to be accusatory, even though he knew better. She met his eyes with an expression he couldn't quite read, and he nodded. "Mm-hm. I grabbed it off my dresser mirror when I was packing. It just seemed… I dunno. Maybe it's time."

She sighed, sounding almost relieved. "Yeah. I think maybe it is. Just promise me…" She hesitated. "Promise me you won't take off the 'Yugi' one."

He smiled. "I promise." He thought about telling her about Atem's things—the crocodile, the top, and the necklace—how the past few days he'd taken to carrying them on him at all times as another tangible reminder. But he was weary enough that he didn't even want to try, deciding it would be better to save that for another day. Instead, he leaned into her. "It's almost time to go."

"You'll beat him, Yugi. And then it will be all over."

He consolidated the god cards together into a single pile and slipped them into his deck. Closing his eyes, he pushed away the image of Professor Hawkins and Sara and settled his mind on his other self, pulling him in and internalizing him. _We are complete._

Opening his eyes, he looked up at Téa, feeling Atem's determination settle into him. "Let's go."

* * *

_To be continued in Part IV: Battle Phase…_


End file.
